Fugitive
by NegativeCWD
Summary: Caught in the middle of a new Backdraft Group terror campaign, one warrior finds himself fleeing not just from enemy Zoids, but from his past as well. COMPLETE
1. A Chance Encounter

** _Fugitive_**

** A Zoids-NC0 FanFic by Negative (aka a lot of other things)**

** Beginning Author's Notes**

Of course I don't own Zoids. Those stupid disclaimers on every FanFic annoy the snot out of me. If you really thought for one second that I owned Zoids, you must be some kind of idiot. With that said though, here's the boilerplate…

This FanFic is actually a totally rewritten version of an earlier one called Zoids: Dark Forces. I now consider that FanFic to be a steaming pile of crap, but the basic idea lives on here.

All of the characters in this FanFic that weren't in the Zoids Anime are either mine (Stevan, Rebecca, etc) or used here with the permission of their respective creators (Calypso and Leah). You may NOT use them without permission.

Thus endeth the boring part. On to the story.

--------

The sound of the truck's wheels grinding on the hardened, pebble-strewn track that passed for a road was the only sound. Not even the whisper of a breeze could be heard, because there was no breeze. The sun beat down oppressively, its rays coloring the desert an even brighter shade of golden-yellow than usual.

Stevan Jonathan, the driver of the truck, pitied anyone stupid enough or unlucky enough to be caught outside in those conditions. He had heard people say that it was only "a dry heat," but they always meant it as a joke. Even in the truck's air-conditioned interior, the temperature bordered on uncomfortable. Brown haired and brown eyed, Stevan wore a green shirt, jeans and boots, having shed his leather jacket much earlier because of the heat. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. They would be on time.

The town was called Sol. The word has its origins in the personal name used for the sun on Earth, thousands of years before the first humans had come to Zi. The town was very small, just a few streets worth of buildings put together to form a rough rectangular shape. At the far end of town was the water processing plant, where the huge pipeline that was Sol's only source of water arrived. Most of the businesses were clustered at that end of town, and that was where the truck was going. Aside from the plant, the town's only sign of technological advancement were the solar panels on the roofs of all the buildings.

"It's just a wide spot in the road," said the woman sitting next to Stevan. "Why does this rag have their offices here?" Calypso Siyna had red hair and violet eyes that grabbed attention in any setting. She wore a black jumpsuit, in defiance of the burning sun.

"Because it's close to the action," Stevan replied. The better part of Zi's central continent was wilderness, desert where the only civilization was little towns like Sol scores of kilometers apart. Stevan had spent so much time in those deserts that at times it seemed difficult to believe that there was any part of the planet that wasn't desert. It was in these stretches of wasteland that most Zoid battles took place. There was much less risk of collateral damage that way. _Nothing out there to damage but hopes, dreams, reputations and bank accounts,_ Stevan thought with a small smile. _And Zoids and their pilots, of course._

_ Zoid Horizon_ wasn't one of the more highly esteemed publications covering Zoid battles, and there were a lot of them, from the Commission's official _ZBC Weekly_ to _Horizon_, with many more in between. _Horizon_ almost cultivated its low-class image, rebel image. It covered the lower-ranked teams, Classes C and B, and had actually become pretty good at picking which unknowns would rise to prominence over the past few years.

Stevan looked into the truck's back seat. "Wake up, Leah. We're here."

It was several seconds before the girl in the back seat seemed to realize he had spoken to her. Leah Carlburg was the youngest member of the team, in her mid-teens. Dressed in an indigo tee shirt and tan denim pants, she had gray eyes and blond hair that partially covered the headphones she was wearing.

"I wasn't asleep," she said, taking the headphones off.

"Asleep with her eyes open," Calypso interjected.

"…and I knew we were here," Leah finished, her.

"Glad we were able to bring you out of your trance," Stevan said, slowing the truck to a stop and cutting the engine in front of what was, surprisingly, the least dingy-looking building in town.

Calypso opened her door and stepped down to the ground. "Explain to me again why we're doing this."

Stevan frowned slightly as he got out of the truck. "For publicity." _Publicity_. He didn't like the word.

"Oh, yeah, now I remember," Calypso said, grinning. "What do we need publicity for? All we have to do is win a lot of battles and the world will bow down before our super-powers of awesomeness. Right?"

Stevan smiled at her sarcasm. Most aspiring Zoid warriors thought that things worked pretty much the way she had said. Every new warrior entered the league sure that they would be one of the best. _You have to_. None of them knew how harsh the world of Zoid battles could be. Most of them learned pretty quickly. Others went broke. The ones who were left kept going, and most of those spent their entire careers in relative anonymity, their struggles un-noticed.

_Not us_, Stevan thought. He, Calypso and Leah were the Chimeras Team. They were ranked in the middle of class B, but had managed to string a few wins together here and there. _Horizon_ wanted to include them in its Team Profiles section, and Stevan wasn't about to tell them no. _Put some good victories together with a little name recognition, and all sorts of doors start opening for you._ That was the theory, at least.

Still, Stevan wasn't entirely happy with the idea of the magazine piece. There were too many higher-ranked teams he considered little more than media whores and corporate lapdogs. But Zoid battling was a business, just like anything else. Weapons, strategies, tactics, rankings…none of them made any difference if the bottom line wasn't what it should be. The more people who knew about the Chimeras Team, the more recordings of their matches would be sold, and the more bets would be made on the outcomes. And they would get a cut of both, though making money off other people's gambling bothered Stevan a little, too. He had seen more than a few lives ruined by gambling, families torn apart and careers wrecked by people playing the odds, looking for the big score that would make everything alright again.

"Now remember, Leah," said Calypso in a tone that told Stevan she was up to something, "we can't let Stevan do all the talking. You know how he loves to brag: team leader, Zoid Academy grad, etc."

Leah laughed and Stevan rolled his eyes. He was used to his teammate's jokes and didn't mind them. The truth was he never talked about his time at the Zoid Academy, and at times he wondered if he was team leader in name only.

He reached for the handle of the tinted-glass door of the _Horizon_ office, only to have the door fly open and nearly hit him in the face. A young woman in her early twenties, about Stevan's age, came walking briskly out of the door, blowing past Stevan and nearly barging into Calypso. "Watch where you're going," the woman said.

"I could say the same to you," Calypso responded icily.

"You should slow down," Stevan said. "It's too hot to move quickly."

The girl turned and looked at him, seemingly noticing him for the first time. Her clothes were a notch above the locals' in quality. She had striking silver hair that flowed down her back in a long tail, and her gray eyes reminded Stevan of rain clouds. Their message was just as clear. _Watch out, take cover._

She looked him up and down in a critical way. She stared him in the face for a second, then spun on her heel and walked away, leaving the Chimeras behind. No angry words, no cutting comebacks. Her attitude said _I don't need to waste any more of my valuable time on you._

"Well, she was nice," said Leah, watching the stranger walk away.

"I just love meeting new people," Calypso agreed. Calypso made no secret of the fact that she preferred Zoids to people, and Stevan often felt the same way.

"I'm just glad you didn't start a real fight over that one," said Stevan, happy to have an opportunity to return Calypso's earlier teasing. "Like that time a couple weeks ago."

Calypso wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of being annoyed. "You mean those punks in that restaurant? They wrote the check and I cashed it."

"The proprietor didn't care about who started it," Stevan reminded her. "He threw us all out."

"Still, they were asking for it…" Calypso said as they finally entered the building.

--------

A couple of hours later, they were done with the magazine and were walking down Sol's main street. "We might as well get something to eat before we start back," Stevan suggested. Calypso and Leah agreed, so they started taking a better look at the shops they were passing. They had already passed the town tavern, where the din of loud music and many voices could be heard from across the street. Stevan already had a headache, so he was more than pleased to pass the place by. They chose the best looking of Sol's small selection of restaurants.

"Now remember," Stevan said, imitating the tone Calypso had used earlier, "try to avoid causing any property damage this time, OK?" He opened the door to the diner, and this time no one almost bowled him over.

"We got the message, leader-boy," said Leah.

The diner wasn't appreciably different from similar ones they had stopped in many times over many months of traveling Zi's wilderness. There were booths along the window-lined front, more along the sides, with tables in between and a bar at the back. The Chimeras made for one of the front booths and began looking at the menu.

"Like I said," Leah announced, "all of the food falls into the 'grub' category."

"Well, choke it down," said Stevan. "Let's get in and out quick, so we can head back to-" he stopped in mid-sentence. His companions followed his gaze up to the bar. A woman with unmistakable silver hair was sitting there, her back to them.

"Oh, great," said Leah.

"Ignore her," Calypso said, turning her attention back to the menu. "We've got as much right to be here as she does. And if she wants to make trouble, we'll be happy to oblige."

Stevan gave his redheaded teammate a hard stare. "Property damage…"

"Enough already!" Calypso said, finally losing her temper. Stevan smiled, pleased to have finally scored a point in his ongoing battle with Calypso, and then glanced up at the bar again.

He thought for a moment, and then slid out of the booth. "I'll be right back."

Calypso did a double-take as she saw him take a step in the direction of the bar. "What, are you going to go start a fight with her now?" Stevan saw that they were attracting attention from the restaurant's other patrons, and wished the place weren't so quiet.

"No," he said. "I was just…"

"Don't you want anything to eat?" Leah asked.

"Yeah, sure. Order something for me," he said, leaning forward with his hands on the table.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, whatever!"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" said Calypso with a devilish smile. She was the team's resident vegetarian.

"Leave him alone, Calypso," Leah said reasonably. "I'm just glad he's trying. He hasn't had a girlfriend in a while."

"You're right. When was the last time?"

"I can't remember…"

Resolving to kill his teammates later, Stevan turned away from the table and started across the room. The silver-haired girl spun her stool around and regarded him frankly. _So much for the element of surprise._

"Hi," he said, sitting down on the stool next to the girl's. She continued to stare at him, daring him not to tuck his tail between his legs and retreat. He took the dare.

"I think I was supposed to ask if this seat was taken," he said.

"I take it you're not a fan of the unscripted, wing-it approach," she responded.

"I tried it once. It didn't turn out well."

_Well, I came through the first volley undamaged. _

"Don't you have anything better to do?" she asked him.

"Frankly?" he responded. "No." Thinking quickly, he pressed on. "Sorry about the noise my teammates made earlier. It was my fault."

He thought he saw a flicker of interest in those raincloud eyes. "And what team would that be?"

"The Chimeras."

She smiled cruelly. "Oh, the same Chimeras that pushed my Spirit Cats out of _Horizon'_s Team Profiles?" She put her elbow on the bar and rested her chin on her palm, staring at him and waiting to see what he would do next.

"Um…" he stammered. Not a good start, but better than the first thing that had popped into his head, which was a curse. "I guess so," he said finally. "_Horizon_ didn't tell us we were pushing anybody else out."

"Would it have made any difference if they had?"

He thought about that for a second. "Probably not."

"I didn't think so." She stared at him for a few more moments. "I suppose you think you're good."

"Yeah, I suppose I do."

"Care to prove it?"

He was surprised, and wondered how much it showed. "You're challenging us? Just like that?"

"I don't have anything better to do, either." She slid off her stool and stood up in one fluid motion. "You'll hear from me."

And with that, she started walking towards the exit. "Hey," Stevan said. She turned back to look at him. "I'm Stevan Jonathan. You never told me what your name is."

"Rebecca Rall," she said, and continued out the door. Stevan watched her go, then blew his breath out in a long, tired sigh. He made his way back to the booth where Calypso and Leah were sitting.

"Well?" Calypso said. "How'd it go?"

He frowned as he sat down. "I think I got more than I bargained for."


	2. Second Chance

            Stevan gazed out across the desert as his Command Wolf came to a stop.  The Zoid and its pilot were standing on the rim of a huge dustbowl, almost a kilometer wide.  Heat rising into the air blurred the horizon.  Behind them, the desert rose steadily in elevation, formed by years of natural forces into a series of giant, broad steps.  The landscape seemed peaceful, in a barren, lifeless kind of way.

            It wouldn't be peaceful for long.

            Calypso's customized GunSniper walked up alongside Stevan and his Zoid, its black and silver paint scheme in contrast to the Command Wolf's gray-white.  "Look's like we've arrived at the party early," she said on Stevan's cockpit screen.

            A second screen appeared.  "It doesn't feel that way up here," said Leah.  She had flown ahead of her teammates in her Redler and has been circling the area for ten minutes already.

            Stevan and Calypso let that pass without further comment.  Stevan was gazing at his cockpit displays idly when the Command Wolf raised its head toward the sky.  

            He smiled.  With no control input from him whatsoever, the Command Wolf had sensed something and moved to see what it was.  That was why he loved piloting Zoids.  Beyond the excitement of battle, it was the fact that each Zoid was undeniably _alive_.  That was what made them irrevocably different from every other kind of vehicle or war machine ever made, and that was what drew him to them.  He remembered how it felt the first time he had piloted a Zoid, the feeling that he was just as much along for the ride as he was giving the commands, that he was entering a into partnership with another living creature that he had to prove himself worthy of.

            The Command Wolf had raised its head to look at the sparkling point of light falling from the sky.  It left a white vapor trail that divided the azure sky in half as it descended.  "Here comes our host," Stevan said.

            The point of light continued to fall, getting larger and larger as it lost altitude and got closer to them.  The shrieking _whoosh_ sound of its progress reached the Chimeras' ears as it got closer to the end of its journey from Zi's upper atmosphere.  Finally, it crashed down in the center of the dust bowl, forming a crater that Stevan knew would be only the largest and most centralized of many by the time the coming battle was over.

            Slowly, the Judge capsule rose from the bottom of the crater.  Its mechanical leg struts locked into their upright position and the capsule opened.  The skinny white Judge robot rotated to view the battlefield.  "The area within a ten kilometer radius is a designated Zoid battlefield," it announced in its artificial, unemotional voice.  "This zone is now restricted.  Only competitors and personnel have authorized access.  Danger!  All others must leave the area at once."

            Stevan keyed in his registration code and transmitted his warrior data to the robot.  His teammates did the same thing.  "Chimeras Team confirmed," the Judge said.  It made another visual scan of the dustbowl, sweeping the area with its electronic sensors.  "The Spirit Cats team has not yet arrived."

            "No kidding, genius," Leah mocked. 

            The Judge ignored this, having been programmed to disregard all such remarks.  "We will wait until the Spirit Cats arrive on the battlefield before we begin."

            "Or," Calypso said, in a tone that let Stevan know she was up to something, "we could use you for target practice to pass the time."

            The Judge swiveled to look at the GunSniper.  "Intentionally damaging a Judge robot or capsule is an offense under Section 6 of the Zoid Battle Rules and Regulations."  It _was_ programmed to recognize threats.

            Stevan could imagine Calypso rolling her eyes.  "Cool off, I was just kidding."  The robot wasn't programmed to detect or understand sarcasm, either.  

            They hadn't waited for more than a minute when Leah called "Here they come."  The Chimeras and the Judge gazed off into the distance and made out the shape of a WhaleKing, descending slowly in stark contrast to the Judge capsule's meteoric plunge.  Stevan expected the WhaleKing to land some distance away, but it just kept coming.

            "They're landing right here?" Calypso said as the WhaleKing settled on its landing struts on the opposite side of the dustbowl.

            _Oh, she's a tricky one,_ Stevan thought.  There was no rule against landing or parking your transport vehicle on the battlefield itself, but most warriors kept theirs a safe distance away.  The transport could take damage from stray fire, and repairs were expensive.  

            But the rules did prohibit intentionally firing at an opposing team's transport.  With their WhaleKing so close by, the Spirit Cats could use it as cover to deliver a withering barrage of fire if they wanted, or possibly even return to it to make quick repairs, while the Chimeras would have be to be extra careful with their shots to avoid hitting the WhaleKing and possibly getting disqualified.  Many would have considered the strategy underhanded, and it was in a way.  But Stevan still felt a grudging admiration for his opponents.  They either had the guts to not care about the WhaleKing getting damaged, or they had a lot more money than most Class B Teams.

            Stevan stared at the giant aircraft, waiting for the mouth to open so that he could see what Zoids the Spirit Cats were fielding.  In Class A, data on the registered teams was available to all combatants, but the Class B and C warriors had no such luxury.  Stevan had tried looking for recordings or press blurbs about the Spirit Cats' matches, but found none.

            The Chimeras waited two full minutes, then three.  Again, Stevan awarded a mental point to the Spirit Cats.  They were employing a psychological tactic now, taking their own sweet time to deploy and letting the Chimeras cool their heels.  _Well, they're certainly not going to psych us out that easily,_ Stevan thought.  Once the fight started, he would be calling the shots.  

            "We've got company," Leah said.

            "I noticed," Calypso responded.

            "Not the Spirit Cats.  There's another WhaleKing headed this way."

            The Command Wolf and its pilot looked skyward again.  Indeed, they could make out the shape of a second WhaleKing, dark against the blue sky.

            _What's this about? _Stevan thought.  _Looks like somebody lost their way._

            "I'll go check it out," Leah said.  She put her Redler in a climb toward the new arrival.  As she got closer to it, the Judge became aware of the interloper's presence.

            "Attention unidentified WhaleKing," the Judge said, "this airspace is part of a designated Zoid battlefield.  Please leave the area at once."  There is no audible response.  Above them, Stevan and Calypso could just barely discern the tiny dot that was the Redler circling the much larger WhaleKing.

            "I don't see any markings," Leah said.  "Let me get a little closer-"  A golden-orange flash illuminated the WhaleKing's black side, and Leah's transmission was cut off by static.  

            "Leah!" Stevan yelled.  The Redler was closely descending, trailing smoke.  

            "They fired at me!" Leah said, reappearing on-screen.  "My right wing is damaged.  I'm going to have to find a place to land."

            "Roger," Stevan acknowledged.

            "Whoever's in that WhaleKing sure is touchy," Calypso commented.  

            "Attention WhaleKing," the Judge began, sounding angry.  Stevan wondered if it was possible for the Judge to actually alter its voice to simulate emotions or if it was just the power of suggestion in his mind, even as he spotted a black dot fly out of the WhaleKing's nose.  "Your actions are in direct violation of Section Seven, Articles-"

            The Judge never finished its speech.  The dot plunged down on the Judge Capsule like a missile locked on to its target and landed directly on top of it, pushing it back into the hole at the bottom of the crater instantly.

            When the dust cleared, Stevan and Calypso saw that the object the WhaleKing had dropped was a black and red version of the standard Judge capsule.  The cylindrical container opened and a similarly colored Judge robot surveyed the area, laughing insanely.  "This battle has been taken over by the Backdraft Group!" it intoned.

            _You've got to be kidding me,_ Stevan thought.  The Backdraft Group had almost fallen apart after their scheme to take over the ZBC during the Royal Cup had failed two years ago.  Many of their operatives had been arrested.  Others – Vega Obscura, for example – had simply disappeared.  Their attacks had become far less frequent since then.  "Calypso, how's Leah?" Stevan asked as he considered all of this.

            "I don't see her," Calypso responded.  "I lost track of her when the judge got taken out."

            Stevan muttered a curse.  _Well, it didn't look like she was out of control, _he thought.  Stevan had no time to worry about his teammate any further.  The Backdraft WhaleKing was coming in for a landing on the dustbowl rim, perpendicular to the Spirit Cat transport.  

            _They're going to ground instead of deploying a Zabat screen,_ Stevan thought.  _This is different than their usual battle plan._

            Dust swirled around the WhaleKing as set down on the rim, just under a kilometer away from the Stevan and Calypso.  Its mouth opened, and Stevan peered into the darkness within.  Slowly, a pair of black-painted Command Wolves paced down the ramp and stood on the edge of the depression.

            Stevan's Command Wolf stared across the bowl, seeming to size up its opposition, then raised its head and howled.  The two black Command Wolves returned the challenge, their voices rising in harmony and echoing off mesas kilometers away.  There was still no sign of activity from the Spirit Cats WhaleKing.  

            "The Chimeras Team versus the Blackhearts Team," the dark Judge announced.  "Battle Mode: 0999."

            "Care to tell us why you selected our battle to screw up when you had so many to choose from?" Calypso asked the robot.

            "Today was just your lucky day," the Judge replied.  _Well, I'll say one thing for the Backdraft Group,_ thought Stevan.  _Their Judges have a better sense of humor than the normal ones._  "Ready…"

            Tracers swarming across his view screen startled Stevan as he watched the Backdraft Command Wolves for movement. The hail of bullets and energy converged on the dark Judge and blew it to burning scrap.  Stevan looked to his right and saw smoke trailing from the GunSniper's  weapons.

            "Why'd you do that?" he asked.

            "It wasn't his lucky day."

            Stevan grinned and shoved his control yoke forward smoothly, guiding the Command Wolf down into the bowl.  It covered the slope in two long leaps and tore across the valley.  "I'll try to bring them down here," he told Calypso.  "Then you'll have an easier shot."

            "Copy." 

            The two black Wolves bounded into the dustbowl, firing ranging shot from their beam cannon.  The blasts bracketed Stevan's Zoid, but didn't even scratch the paint.  _Good boys,_ he told them.  _Make yourselves nice targets._  He swept his targeting crosshairs over the leading Backdraft Command Wolf and pulled the trigger.  The shot missed, sending two clouds of dust and sand flying in to the air.  The enemy Zoid ran through the clouds and returned fire.  

            Stevan angled his Zoid to the left, away from its collision course with the enemy.  Stevan felt the resistance in the control yoke, and knew how badly his Command Wolf wanted to charge headlong into battle against its Backdraft counterparts.  

            The gatling guns on the GunSniper's shoulders came to life again, spitting streams of shells at the trailing Command Wolf.  The burst stitched twin lines of pockmarks on the bowl floor, but failed to reach the Backdraft Zoid.  The two Command Wolves made skidding turns and ran at the GunSniper.

            Stevan frowned.  _Hello?  Easy backshot.  Anybody home?_  The Command Wolf swung to pursue the enemy Zoids almost before Stevan could direct it to.  Calypso blazed away at the onrushing Wolves but failed to connect as they weaved back and forth.  Stevan fought to keep his targeting reticule on the trailing Wolf, and was finally rewarded with a targeting lock.  _Got you_.  He pulled the trigger and held it down.

            The twin beam cannons on his Command Wolf's back fired three times, and this time the shots flew true.  The black Command Wolf jerked, halted, and fell to the ground, reduced to the inanimate metal object that it would appear to the untrained eye and would remain until its Command System was re-started.

The other Command Wolf lurched back on its haunches, carving furrows into the desert with its feet.  It fired up the slope at Calypso's GunSniper and simultaneously activated its smokescreen generator tubes, obscuring Stevan's view of it and preventing him from seeing the result of its shot.

            He swore and brought his Command Wolf to a skidding halt of its own as the black smoke totally surrounded him.  His radar was only really useful on flat terrain, and was useless in the confines of the bowl.  

            Slowly, the white Command Wolf stalked to the left, snarling. _Where'd you go?_  Stevan eased the Command Wolf to a stop.  It crouched, looking for its erstwhile opponent.  

            "Stevan," Calypso said, appearing on his display.  "My Combat System is offline.  I'm out of the fight."  With its Combat System frozen, the GunSniper could still move, but it couldn't fire its weapons, and the raptor Zoid wasn't designed for physical combat, either.

            "Understood," Stevan said curtly.  "Can you tell where the other Command Wolf-…"

            He stopped mid-sentence as the Backdraft Command Wolf leaped out of the smoke behind him with a triumphant cry.  Operating on his reflexes and instinct combined with his Zoid's, Stevan spun the Command Wolf one hundred eighty degrees to meet the enemy Zoid's attack.  

            The two Command Wolves crashed into each other, and the sound of reverberating metal filled the dustbowl.  The view of the smoke through his view screen turned upside down.  Stevan felt his Zoid roll and discerned that it was carrying some kind of weight with it.  He thumbed a button on his control yoke.

            The white Command Wolf's teeth crackled with lightning as its Electron Strike Fangs activated.  The Zoid's jaws, already clamped around the black Command Wolf's neck as the two struggled at the bottom of the bowl, exerted all of their crushing force, punching through the black Wolf's neck and shorting out its main control cable.  The Backdraft Zoid went limp.

            Breathing hard, Stevan felt his Zoid cease its fight against the unseen adversary.  The Command Wolf slowly returned to its feet, and Stevan stared down at the defeated black Wolf on the ground in front of him as the smoke cloud finally began to clear.  His Zoid called again, this time a victory howl.

Stevan stared into the cockpit, trying to see if the pilot was all right.  He couldn't see any motion at all.  Frowning, he peered harder at the orange cockpit canopy, his eyes straining to see inside.

            _There is no pilot.  _There was nothing in the Black Command Wolf's cockpit at all.

            How could there be no pilot?  He knew the Backdraft used a droid-controlled version of the Zabat, but those Zoids relied on orders from a human commander and were designed to succeed in combat based on superior numbers.  To his knowledge, there was no droid brain sophisticated enough to guide a Zoid in the type of intense, up-close-and-personal combat common in traditional Zoid battles.

            His comm beeped and a new window opened, showing Rebecca's face.  She applauded appreciatively.  "Well done.  You weren't just bragging the other day."

            He stared at her image incredulously.  "Why didn't you help?" he asked.

            She smiled at him.  "It was two against two-a fair fight.  I wanted to see if you really were any good."

            Stevan shook his head and turned the Command Wolf toward the slope where Calypso was waiting.  "Let's get out of here."


	3. In the Shadows

Rebecca had approved of Stevan's performance, but four days later, other interested parties were reviewing the battle and forming their own opinions.

The Count sat hunched over the table, his fingers steepled and his expression unreadable behind the small, dark-tinted lenses of his glasses. The room was quite large, but most of it was veiled in darkness. The only light was from the table. Projected in the air over the table was a holographic recording of the fight between the Chimeras and the Backdraft's Blackhearts Team. In the projection, the Chimeras' GunSniper fired at the two black Command Wolves and missed. The droid-piloted Zoids abruptly halted their charge at the Chimeras' Command Wolf and turned to engage the GunSniper.

The Count touched a control on the side of the table and the projection froze. "Explain."

The man sitting across from the Count at the holo-table shifted uncomfortably. He was dressed in a lab coat, and his thinning, prematurely gray hair and lined face spoke of many long, tiring hours spent in pursuit of his work. "The new droid processors are a significant step up from our older versions, like what we used in the Zabats. But the idea has limitations we haven't overcome yet."

"Get to the point, Doctor," the Count said quietly.

"Each Zoid has a will of its own. A spirit, some call it. The strength of that will varies depending on the individual Zoid, but it's always there. Even if the Zoid is not directly rebelling against its pilot – whether it's a human being or a computer processor – its will still has an enormous influence on the way it performs."

"For example," the man went on, "the Command Wolf's basic nature conditions it to act as part of a team. So it just never occurred to the droid-controlled Wolves to split up and engage the two opponents separately. At first they concentrated on the enemy Command Wolf because it was the most immediate threat. When the GunSniper interfered, they switched targets – but in both cases, they attacked together. The situation was made worse by the fact that we developed these processors from the ones used in Sleeper Zoids during the Helic-Guylos war. Sleepers always acted as part of a large group because the droid units weren't smart enough to succeed in combat otherwise, and because the Zoids used as Sleepers were always small and lightly armed."

The Count regarded the scientist, his dark lenses two steaming, black pools. "The units we're using are supposed to be improved. Why didn't the droid processors order the Zoids to deviate from their natural behavior?"

"The processors' main purpose is to target and fire the Zoids' weapons. They don't have complete control. We tried giving them greater control early on in the system's development, but the results have been…very poor. The Zoids often refuse to respond to the computers' input at all. We haven't yet determined the cause."

"Go on," the Count said.

"So we scaled back the computers' functions to basic gunnery and piloting assistance, as with the models we used for the droid Zabats. But they always operated under the orders of a human commander."

There was a heavy pause. "So you are telling me that we are back to square one? That we," and here the Doctor could tell the Count meant "you," "…have made no progress?"

The lab-coated man gulped visibly. "N-No," he stammered. "The new units are an improvement in terms of accuracy and speed. But the idea has inherent limitations. The time when a droid-piloted Zoid can hold its own against a Zoid with a really skilled human at the controls is still far off."

The Count nodded and turned his head away from the holo table and the scientist, staring off into the blackness that filled the rest of the room. "I see." He was silent again for half a minute, and the Doctor started to sweat. "You've told me all I need to know. Carry on with the project."

"Yes, sir," the researcher answered. He exited the room as quickly as he could without making his nervousness obvious. The door slid closed behind him, and the Count turned off the holotable. The frozen image of the black Command Wolves disappeared.

--------

Though the frightened scientist didn't know it, he had reported to a much larger audience than just the Count. The entire conversation had been transmitted to a room thousands of kilometers away. The room was dominated by an enourmous, U-shaped carved-wood table, with thirty seats along its outer edge. From the cavernous hall's ceiling hung a black banner emblazoned with the image of a red dragon coiled around a sword against a red diamond-shaped field.

The emblem of the Guylos Empire.

Most of the thirty places were filled. The ones that were not were filled with holoprojections, so that those individuals who could not be physically present at the meeting could participate. Each man or woman wore the crest of a Guylos noble family.

Here, on Zi's so-called "dark continent," Nyx, the Guylos Council of Nobles, leaders of the Imperial remneant, met to plan how they would shape the futures of those who knew nothing of their existence.

The holoprojection of the room where the Count had discussed the droid processors disappeared from where it had been positioned in the open end of the table, beneath the banner. A smaller image of the Count himself blinked into existence over his place at the table.

"You have all heard the report on the project," began an older, gray-haired man in the middle of the table. "Council Members: what say you?"

"I say this has gone on long enough!" a younger man with long, black hair shouted from the far right end of the table. "How much more of our resources must we waste on this failed Backdraft experiment?"

"I agree," said an older woman, in a calmer tone. "We gave Count Steinhoff," she said, nodding in the direction of the projection of the Count, "free rein over the project because he assured us that his brainchild, the Backdraft Group, could be forged into a weapon we could use to overthrow the Zoid Battle Commission. That was twelve years ago." She let the last three words fall heavily. "Two years ago, he told us that his efforts had come to fruition: his Zoid and pilot would win the Royal Cup and destroy all opposition. With the ZBC in chaos, we would be able to take back our rightful control of the Central Continent with ease. But instead…"

The younger man jumped in again. "But instead, we almost lost the entire organization. Steinhoff's Zoid was defeated by the Blitz Team and their Liger Zero, who his operatives had tried and failed to eliminate over and over again. The Royal Cup operation was a disaster, and in the ZBC offensive that followed the Backdraft Group lost almost half its strength." The man struck the table with the side of his hand as though he could slice through the polished wood.

The Count surpassed a rumble of irritation. "Baron Romm and Duchess Nowotny are correct," he said, cutting off Romm's tirade. The man was a firebrand, young, short-tempered and impetuous. "The Backdraft Group did suffer heavily in the failed Royal Cup plan and its aftermath. But it was only wounded. Wounded gravely, albeit, but not mortally. The rebuilding is almost complete. We have filled our ranks with new warriors. And the new droid processors will be a powerful asset." He threw a hard stare at the projections of the other council members. "The battle you saw was only the first real-world test of the new units. The conditions were not optimal, and neither were the results."

"How so?" Duchess Nowotny asked.

"We expected both of the teams in the battle we took over to fight. We would then have used more droid units," he explained. "But one team never left their transport. Using the entire force of droid units available against only two opponent Zoids would hardly have been a productive test." Romm heaved an exasperated sigh, which Count Steinhoff ignored. "So we used only two units," he went on, angrily staring at Romm behind his dark glasses. "The conditions of the test were not ideal, but.."

"If your subordinates are too stupid to test the units properly…" Romm began.

"Enough."

Steinhoff turned to look at the speaker, the gray-haired man.

The gray-haired man was Duke Horvath, the Chairman of the Order Council. Steinhoff didn't trust the man any farther away than he could shoot him. He was always pretending to be the stern elder statesman, above Council bickerings, but Steinhoff didn't buy that act for a second.

"The result of that test is not the issue here," Horvath said. The Count's eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses. "The issue is not the battle, but the choice of opponents."

"Please explain, Duke," Duchess Nowotny said.

Horvath gazed at Steinhoff. "One of the teams involved in the battle the Backdraft interrupted for the test contained one of this Order's operatives. In fact," here he paused. _No doubt for dramatic emphasis,_ Steinhoff thought. "…a member of this very Council."

There was a rumble of low murmuring from the council. Count Steinhoff's mind raced. All the attention given to the battle by the Backdraft had been analysis of the droid Zoid processors. Steinhoff had no idea what Horvath was talking about, and that annoyed him more than anything said in the Council meeting so far.

Duke Horvath allowed the commotion to continue for a moment, then went on. "Isn't that correct, Lady?" he said, addressing a young woman who appeared via holoprojection several seats down with long brown hair. She wore no family crest; her robes were marked only with the Guylos Empire emblem, with one important difference: the dragon wore a gold crown.

"It is, Duke," she answered.

The Count bit down hard on his tongue to stop himself from spitting out a curse. Why did the girl waste her time with Zoid battles anyway, Prozen take her? The last Steinhoff had heard, she was playing around in the lower ranks in one on one battles. He didn't know she was running her own team, and had certainly never considered the possibility that his subordinates might interrupt one of her battles.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "All of our Order's operatives currently on the Central Continent have ID codes they can transmit to avoid any trouble with Backdraft forces. The unit that took over the battle between the Chimeras and Spirit Cats Teams received no such code." More mutterings and murmurings.

"That," said Horvath, speaking louder than was really necessary to be heard over the muted uproar, "is immaterial. All Backdraft commanders are supposed to have lists of people who are off-limits to their attacks. The Backdraft should never have interfered with that battle."

_So much for your standoffish objectivity, you old fool,_ Steinhoff thought. "The Princess was not directly attacked and no harm came to her. Her transport was not even damaged."

"That is beside the point," Horvath intoned. "This incident is part of a larger question: has the Backdraft Group ceased to become an effective means to our ends?"

"The answer to that question," Romm said, "is obvious to anyone with half a brain. The Backdraft Group was defeated at the moment that should have been its greatest triumph, it is accomplishing nothing, and now its operatives are failing to even follow proper procedures."

"I must say I am leaning toward Count Romm's assessment as well," said Baron Galland, a nondescript individual at the other end of the table. "Count Steinhoff assured us that the Backdraft Group could be used to bring down the ZBC, which he said was necessary as preperation for our reclaiming the former Imperial territory on the Central Continent. That has not happened."

"And all Steinhoff tells us is that he needs more time, more rescourses. I say that the Backdraft Group was a poor idea that has outlived any usefulness it ever had," Romm said. "Our armies are more than strong enough to take back what is rightfully ours. Why must we resort to these subterfuges?"

"And I say…" The Lady spoke in a clear, ringing voice, and all eyes turned to her face on the holoprojection. "…that this so-called reclamation of our old territory is also a flawed idea. No matter the rightness of our claim to that part of the continent, we will only be viewed as invaders and conquerors by the continent's people."

Horvath looked at her and Romm balefully. "That is neither here nor there. The question is wether the Backdraft is still an effective tool for our ends under Count Steinhoff's leadership."

Steinhoff spoke before anyone else could start pontificating. "I believe I can answer that question."

"How is that, Count?" Horvath asked.

"Some of you doubt the effectiveness of the Backdraft Group." He smiled. "I am prepared to show you all how strong Backdraft is."


	4. In the Flames

One week after they had first been there, Stevan, Calypso and Leah found themselves in Sol again.

They stood across the street from where the town's ZBC office was. Or at least, where it had been.

The smoke from the burning building hurt Stevan's bleary eyes as he stared at it. The town's fire department was on the scene and starting to hose down the blaze, but the office would be a total loss. A cloud of steam rose up as the water doused the flames, mixing with the smoke to flush the faces of the firemen red beneath their oxygen masks. The only good thing about the incident was that the fire had started in the early morning. The sun had only been up for a half hour, and the office hadn't even opened yet when the fire started.

No one knew how the fire had started. Stevan, however, had a few theories.

Stevan stared at the dancing orange flames, watching the patterns, his vision distorted by the heat. They reminded him of a story he had heard years before, about mystic warrior cultures that stared into flames before going into battle, looking for signs and visions. As he stared, he remembered the morning before.

--------

_The Chimeras base was a relatively small, modest affair compared to the sprawling complexes available to some higher-ranked teams. Stevan knew they were lucky to have it at all. Many teams in the lower classes had to rely on rented hangar space for their Zoids. That cost money, money those teams often didn't have. Repairs were a worse problem. Most warriors knew how to work on their Zoids and perform basic repairs, but when the damage was beyond what the Zoids themselves could heal with their self-recovery abilities or their pilots could fix, those without the necessary facilities and machinery had to pay others to repair their rides._

_The base was little more than a hulking hangar with a smaller, adjoining building for the team's living quarters, out in the middle of nowhere. Sol was the nearest town, and it was nearly a hundred kilometers away. The only thing in between, and in every other direction for vast distances, was desert._

_The Chimeras were supposed to fight the Spirit Cats later that day, to make up for the match the Backdraft had broken up. Stevan was sitting on the couch in the base's main living area, watching TV. More accurately, he was flipping channels at near-warp speed. He noticed a female reporter talking about something earnestly as he went past a news station, and flipped back to see what was going on._

_"…still trying to figure out the details of this story," the reporter was saying, "but what we do know is that a large force of unidentified Zoids attacked a ZBC outpost west of Romeo City early this morning…"_

_"Hey Calypso, Leah," Stevan called. "Come in here for a second." _

_The red-haired pilot and her blond teammate walked through the door into the room a moment later. "What's up?" Leah asked._

_"Check this out," Stevan answered, indicating the TV with the remote. _

_"…the Commission deployed Zoids to defend the outpost, but they were outnumbered and quickly brought down," the reporter continued. "The attacking force then opened fire on the outpost itself, inflicting serious damage. Over a dozen injuries have been confirmed so far."_

_Calypso frowned as she looked at the screen. "Where was this?"_

_"Near Romeo." As Stevan examined the reporter's face, he decided the reporter's earnest tone and expression didn't seem entirely sincere. She looked like she was trying to contain her excitement. _

"_Who did this?" Leah asked._

_"Efforts are still being made to determine the source of the attack," the reporter said, as if in answer to Leah's question. "But at this time, there's no hard information."_

_The image on the screen switched to an equally earnest-looking male anchorman sitting behind the usual desk in the news studio. "Laura, is there any indication this attack may have been perpetrated by the Backdraft Group?" he asked._

_"Jack," Laura responded, "while it's certainly possible, we don't have any word on that right now."_

_"Actually," Stevan said, mocking the reporter's tone, "we don't have any word on anything, but we're going to talk about this all day anyway."_

_Calypso and Leah laughed, but didn't turn away from the TV. The phone rang, but they ignored it._

_Stevan got off the couch and left the room, heading toward the alcove where the videophone was. "Don't bother, I'll get it," he said sarcastically as he touched the button to answer the call._

_Rebecca appeared on the smaller screen in the wall. "Hello," she said._

_Stevan was surprised to see her. "Hi," he answered. "I wasn't expecting you to call," he said honestly._

_"I know."_

_"Did you hear about what happened near Romeo City?" Stevan asked, trying to figure out what the purpose of the call was._

_"Yeah," she said. "I called to tell you we're going to forfeit the battle this afternoon."_

_Stevan's surprise was visible on his face. "Why?" he asked._

_Rebecca smiled. "I won't bore you," she said. _

_Stevan smiled back. "Don't you want to see which team really deserves the publicity anymore?" _

_"I don't have time to talk about it right now," she said, although a look that passed through her eyes for a second let him know the remark had hit home. "I've got to go." Her expression got more serious. "I wanted to warn you people to be careful, also," she said._

_Stevan blinked. "Careful? Why?"_

_"You beat the Backdraft Group," she reminded him. "They don't have a reputation for being forgiving people."_

_Stevan knew she was right. The Backdraft Group had run up against the Blitz Team by chance several months before they won the Royal Cup, and had never stopped trying to avenge that first loss until the Berzerk Fury had finally come up against the Blitz Team's Liger Zero during the Backdraft's failed takeover of the Royal Cup and ended the feud once and for all. The Backdraft may have been a lot weaker than they were then, but that didn't mean they didn't hold grudges just as long, or with just as much passion. "Okay," he told Rebecca. "We'll keep that in mind."_

_She smiled again and nodded. "Goodbye."_

_"See you." The image snapped away into blackness as the transmission ended. _

_Calypso came up behind him out of the living room. "Who was that?" she asked as she walked by. _

_"It was Rebecca from the Spirit Cats," Stevan told her._

_"And what did the Amazon queen have to say?" Leah inquired. After the Spirit Cats had stood by while the Chimeras fought the Backdraft, Stevan had been subjected to a whole new round of jokes from his teammates, mostly about Rebecca being part of some bizarre war cult that required all prospective mates to prove themselves in combat._

_"That she was forfeiting," Stevan said._

_Leah and Calypso jerked their heads around. "What? Why?" said Leah._

_"Your guess is as good as mine," Stevan answered. "She said she didn't have time to explain it." He thought about the conversation. "She also told us to be careful. She seemed to think the Backdraft Group might try to get some revenge."_

_Calypso made a face. "Her concern is touching. She tells us to watch out, but when push comes to shoot she sits back and watches?" Stevan just shrugged._

_"Why worry about the Backdraft?" Leah said. "They butt in to one battle, and everybody's looking over their shoulders?"_

_Stevan looked back towards the living room, where the reporters were still going on about the attack on the ZBC outpost._ Maybe everybody should be.

--------

The Chimeras moved down the street, leaving the burning building behind them. The smoke, however, seemed to follow them, giving them no clear air to breathe, no respite.

Stevan stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the fire, which was visible only as a bright orange glow through the choking gray haze. It reminded him of the night before.

"Now what?" said Leah.

It was the same question she had asked the night before, as they had watched their base be demolished from a hill a few kilometers away.

--------

_Stevan jumped into the cockpit of the Chimeras' Gustav transport Zoid and slapped the button that closed the canopy. He didn't bother to strap himself in. He didn't have time, and doing so would seem a laughably inadequate safety measure at this point._

_His hands flew over the controls, rousing the Gustav from its "sleep" and bringing it to full power. The Gustav had three cargo trailers attached to it, one more than usual. The insect Zoid had power to spare, but towing three loaded trailers would still cut its speed drastically. Still, the Chimeras' had invested in the extra trailer in case all three of their Zoids were immobilized in combat. That had happened more than once._

_As it was, only two of the trailers were loaded, with Stevan's own Command Wolf and Leah's Redler. Since both were fairly small Zoids, the Gustav would actually be traveling well below its maximum towing weight. Stevan advanced the throttle to its limit and the transport Zoid lurched forward, its treaded wheels, designed for rough wilderness terrain, gripping the ferrocrete hangar floor easily. The Gustav and its train rumbled out of the hangar into the night._

_The sky was painted with clouds, so that if you stared at it long enough you could fool yourself into thinking that the darker parts of clear sky were clouds and vice versa. Stevan had no time for such reflection. Zi's twin moons emerged now and then from the clouds, combining with the Gustav's powerful headlights to illuminate the area immediately around the Chimeras' base. Stevan's Command Wolf crouched on its trailer and growled. _

_Calypso's GunSniper was standing fifty meters away, its feet spread wide apart to better absorb the recoil of its weapons. The light from the moon, the Gustav's headlights and the muzzle flashes of the raptor-Zoid's own guns made the silver accents on the GunSniper's black paint scheme shine. Calypso was blazing away at a Rev Raptor with her shoulder gatling rifles and wrist-mounted laser guns. The Rev Raptor had just come around the corner of the hangar and had walked right into Calypso's barrag. Her Zoid's infrared scope making it a deadly night-fighter. The Rev Raptor reeled under the fusillade, staggering backwards and then falling gracelessly to the ground._

_The second Rev Raptor to come around the hangar dashed past its knocked-out companion. The pilot may have been angered at the downfall of his comrade, or perhaps just wanted to give a better accounting of himself. Either way, the Rev Raptor charged right for the GunSniper, forgoing the use of its arm-mounted lasers in favor of its formidable claws and sickle-shaped blades._

_Whatever his reasoning, the Rev Raptor pilot's choice was the wrong one. Calypso didn't have time to move far, but she still managed to avoid the Raptor's rush. The GunSniper dropped into an awkward, left-leaning half-crouch, turning to the right and pumping a stream of bullets and laser blasts into the side of the Rev Raptor as it tried to halt. Calypso's shots scrapped the Raptor's left leg actuators, making it fall to its left and into the GunSniper. Calypso worked her controls and shoved the disabled enemy Zoid away. A commlink window appeared inside the Gustav. Calypso's face was set with anger and determination. "Hurry up and get out of here, you guys!" she said. "I can't stand here and hold them off all night!"_

_Behind the Gustav, Leah steered the Chimeras' cargo truck out of the hangar. As large as it was, the truck was dwarfed by the massive transport Zoid and its attending trailers. Leah had never driven the vehicle before, but that was among the least of the team's concerns. Once they reached open desert, it wouldn't matter that much._

_Only thirty minutes before, the Chimeras had been sound asleep in their beds. They had been awakened by an alarm, its beeping not overly loud or strident, but insistent nonetheless._

_Some months before, Stevan had managed to acquire several crates of proximity warning sensors for a bargain price. The sensors were ordinarily placed somewhere in the rear portion of a Zoid, where they would alert the pilot to a close-range attack or ambush from behind. Stevan had arranged them in an evenly spaced ring several kilometers wide around the team's base. Aside from official Zoid battles, the part of the desert the Chimeras called home was usually fairly quiet. But bandits were not unheard of, and Stevan had recognized the fact that the base's air-search radar would only detect flying Zoids and arial transports, both of which were unlikely to be part of a bandit force. Stevan had talked Calypso and Leah into contributing enough cash to buy the sensors, which he had set up as an early-warning system against a ground attack._

_At the moment, all three Chimeras were more than satisfied with the return on their investment. It was the sensors that had saved them, alerting them when the attacking Zoid force had entered the perimeter and giving them enough time to prepare. If gathering what personal effects and useful material they could and getting ready to run for their lives counted as "preparing." _

_Three-fourths of the sensors had gone off almost simultaneously, telling the Chimeras that they were badly outnumbered. Knowing that people interested in having a polite chat didn't usually arrive at midnight with a large Zoid force, the Chimeras had quickly decided that discretion was the better part of valor. No one had contacted them, and they received no indication as to the reason for the attack or the identity of the attackers._

_Despite their hurry, they hadn't managed to avoid the advance units of the enemy force, two of which Calypso had just gunned down. Calypso had won a brief argument over which of them would drive the Gustav and which would provide cover. Her Zoid was better equipped for fighting multiple targets at night, but Stevan wished he could have used his Command Wolf's smokescreen generators. Zoids could move on their own, but relied on their pilots to operate weapons and other such equipment._

_"There are more of them coming," Calypso said. The GunSniper was sweeping its head back and forth, scanning the surrounding area with its infrared searcher as the Gustav and truck rolled by. _

_"Don't wait for them to get here, come on!" Stevan yelled at her. The GunSniper turned slowly, glancing back at the approaching enemy Zoids before following the two vehicles. The truck slowly slipped past the Gustav. Leah was doing a passably good job of driving the big truck, although Stevan wouldn't have approved of her lead-foot pace at most other times. As things stood, she was outpacing the Gustav. Of course, the GunSniper could easily leave both in its dust._

_"They're gaining," Calypso said. Stevan muttered a curse and tried to think of a way to make the Gustav go faster. _

_"Calypso," he said after a moment, "I need to get rid of that third trailer. It's not doing anything but slowing me down."_

_"How?" Calypso asked._

_"Shoot it off! Aim for the coupling between the second and third trailers."_

_"Copy," said Calypso. She throttled up her GunSniper and pulled even with the Gustav's trailer train on its right side. Examining the trailers for a few seconds, she took careful aim with the tri-barrel laser gun on the GunSniper's left wrist and fired. Blasts of coherent light ripped apart the coupling that joined the Gustav's third trailer to its second. _

_"Careful you don't hit my Redler," Leah said nervously. _

_Calypso glared on the screen. "Your confidence in me is very encouraging," she said. The coupling finally blew apart completely, and the third trailer rolled to a stop while the Gustav and its remaining two trailers moved on, slowly gaining speed. Stevan smiled and rocked forward and backward in his seat as though he could physically force more speed out of the Gustav. Even if it wasn't towing anything at all, there was no way a Gustav could outrun a Rev Raptor._

_"Are they still gaining?" he asked, wishing the Gustav had something more than a rudimentary sensor system._

_Calypso's brows knitted as she slowed the GunSniper long enough to take a look back at the base. "No," she told Stevan. "They're not following us anymore." The GunSniper came to a halt as she stared back at the team's home, which was being systematically being reduced to rubble. _

_"They're demolishing the base."_

_--------_

So they had headed for Sol, planning to report the incident to the ZBC. What they would have done after that hadn't been discussed. They had arrived in the little town to find the ZBC office a burning ruin.

Stevan considered Leah's question as they continued down the street, walking slowly despite the fact that they felt like they should be watching their backs every minute.

"Stevan?" Leah prompted. "I said, what next?"

"I heard you," Stevan responded. "I don't know," he admitted.

"They're gunning for us," Calypso said darkly.

"The Backdraft," Stevan said.

"Right. This can't be a coincidence. They knew we might come here, and they didn't want us getting any help from the Commission," the redhead went on.

"First the attack on our battle, then the ZBC outpost near Romeo, then our base, and now this," Stevan pondered. "It looks like the Backdraft is starting an all-out terror campaign."

"But why all the attention directed our way?" Leah asked.

"Maybe we're just lucky," Calypso said sarcastically, recalling the Dark Judge's words.

"Whatever the reason, we have to decide what to do next," said Stevan. "They didn't seem interested in chasing us down, but if they're trying to keep us from getting help, that means they aren't done with us yet." A sobering thought. He noticed they were passing the restaurant where they he had talked to Rebecca more than a week before. "Let's go in here and set down," he suggested. "We need to think about this."

"I'd kill for a cup of coffee," Calypso agreed.

They opened the door and walked in. The somewhat disheveled Chimeras attracted glances from the diner's staff, but they had seen far less reputable-looking traffic over the years and quickly turned their attention back to their work. The three Zoid warriors slid into the same booth they had sat in before. The waitress came by soon afterwards. She privately thought that the fire down the street didn't merit the worried expressions on the face of the three new patrons, but that was none of her business and she kept it to herself.

"So what do we do?" Leah asked again, after the waitress had returned with their drinks and departed. They kept asking themselves that question, but it didn't get any easier to answer.

"Whatever it is, we'd better do it fast," Calypso said as she drank her coffee.

"What we really need to decide is where we go," said Stevan.

"There isn't another town for a hundred kilometers."

Stevan let his head fall against the top of the booth's seat back and stared at the ceiling. He tried to make his mind work on the problems before them, but found himself unable to concentrate. He whispered a bit of uncharacteristic profanity and leaned forward again, his forehead resting against the heels of his hands.

"It's a small planet after all."

Stevan's eyes snapped open, and he turned his head to the right to see who had spoken. Rebecca was standing there, hands on her hips, a small smile on her face. She looked over the ragged Chimeras. "You all look like you've had an interesting night."

Stevan snorted a sharp, mirthless laugh. Neither Calypso or Leah spoke.

"What's wrong with all of you?" Rebecca asked.

She got less of a response than before. The Chimeras sat in stony silence. Rebecca's smile faded. "I'll talk to you when you aren't hung over." She turned and started to walk away.

"How did you know?"

She stopped and turned around again to look at Stevan. Their eyes locked. "How did I know what?"

"That the Backdraft Group would come after us looking for payback," he answered. His voice was flat and emotionless.

"Did they?" Rebecca asked, her eyes widening.

"Last night," Stevan told her. "Our base is just a messy spot in the desert now."

Rebecca's mouth dropped open slightly. Her gray eyes were unfathomable. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said simply, pursing her lips.

Stevan's expression did not indicate that her feelings were appreciated. "So how did you know?" he repeated. His gaze never left her face. Calypso and Leah had fixed their stared on Rebecca now, as well.

"I didn't!" she answered. Her denial hung in the air and a heavy silence followed.

"Then you have good instincts," Stevan said. "If you don't gamble, you should." Stevan heard the dark Judge robot's voice again. _Today was just your lucky day._

_Lucky. . . _

The stormcloud look Stevan had seen before returned to Rebecca's eyes. "Exactly what are you saying?" she demanded.

Stevan found himself remembering a story from Earth he had once heard, about a prophetess who foretold disaster, but was cursed to always be ignored. In his peripheral vision, he could see that the conversation was attracting attention.

"Nothing," he said finally, looking away.

Rebecca's expression softened as different emotion warred within her. At last the glare disappeared entirely, replaced by a look of sympathy and concern. "Is there any way I can help?" she asked.

Stevan exchanged glances with his teammates. "I don't think so."

She seemed unsure what to do. "Well, be careful," she said.

_That's what you said before._

She started to step away. "Good luck," she told them. Then she was gone.

_Today was just your lucky day._ Stevan squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the damnable robot's voice out of his mind.

And when he closed his eyes, he could see the flames rising into the air.


	5. Ghost Town

It was mid afternoon. The sun was at its hottest, and the endless wastelands at their most inhospitable. Golden desert stretched on and on to the horizon, so hellishly hot and dry that one almost expected to find the bleached white bones of those who had succumbed to the sun's relentless assault half buried in the sand.

The Command Wolf was, in fact, a bone-white color, but it was in no danger of falling victim to the hostile terrain. Conditions that would destroy flesh and blood often didn't even amount to an annoyance for those lucky enough to be made of metal.

The Command Wolf paced across the dunes, blazing a trail for the cargo truck and Gustav following some distance behind. If the Zoid has been bright white instead of the flatter, grayer shade, the sun reflecting off its armor would have hurt the eyes of anyone looking at it. As it was, Calypso, now driving the Gustav with the GunSniper and Redler in tow, was growing royally sick of looking at the Command Wolf's butt.

She let out a deep breath, a heavy, growling, annoyed sound, and opened a commlink to Stevan. "How much farther do we have to go?" It was the first time she had inquired. Leah had asked twice already.

Stevan smiled, but with no levity. "No farther," he answered. The Command Wolf came to a stop at the top of a particularly large sand dune. Zoid and pilot surveyed the scene below.

Run-down buildings were clustered in a rambling, shapeless mass in the valley below. Constructed out of resilient metal and ferrocrete, their dark colors stood out against the yellow-orange landscape. They were uniformly plain and boxy, designed for functionality and durability with no thought whatsoever given to aesthetics.

The desert's constant attacks had made the buildings deteriorate much faster than they normally would have. Sand had been pushed by the wind into smaller dunes against the smaller, outside structures. Given a few more years, those buildings would probably be buried entirely.

Not so the larger structures at the center of the cluster. These loomed up over the rest, easily several times as large as those that surrounded them. It would take many years for the desert to swallow them, and if a hundred years after that one were to start digging, one would probably find them still standing beneath the sand, largely unscathed. They had been built to last. Last they had, and last they would, long after their usefulness to those who had built them had ended. They had been there at the inception of the town. (For a town it was, of sorts, or at least had been.) In fact, the town owed its existence to those massive edifices.

The Gustav and cargo truck made their way up the steep dune, the Gustav scaling the slope easily with its treaded wheels and incredible torque, the truck with somewhat more difficulty. They came to a stop on either side of the Command Wolf, settling (slightly) into the shifting sand.

Calypso and Leah examined the scene with surprise and curiosity. One minute, they were half ready to believe they would never see any sign of civilization again. The next, they found themselves staring at an intact, if deserted, town.

The Command Wolf let out a low, almost mournful howl.

"What is this place?" Leah asked.

She waited for an answer, but one wasn't soon in coming. The Command Wolf was in motion again, pacing steadily down the other side of the sand dune and down into the valley. The Gustav and the truck followed it a moment later, but they fell behind. The Command Wolf's nature-inspired, quadruped design allowed it to deal with uneven terrain better than any wheeled or treaded vehicle ever could.

Stevan let the Zoid find its own way down the incline, keeping his hands on the control yoke but not using it. The Command Wolf continued its steady pace down the hill, and after a couple of minutes the Zoid and its pilot found themselves on level ground again. They skirted the town and made their way down its main street. The buildings had shielded the street from the blowing sand, and the Command Wolf's metal paws left prints in only a relatively thin layer of dust.

They moved past the smaller structures that had served as dwellings, and made their way deeper into the empty settlement. At the end of the street lay the giant buildings they had seen from above. They dominated the view as much up close as they had at a distance. In fact, they seemed to get more imposing.

Stevan and the Command Wolf reached the center of town. They examined the weather-beaten Zoid hangar (for that was what the huge building was) together. The enormous doors of the hangar were gone, allowing the Zoid and its pilot to peer inside, where shadows, sand, and assorted detritus existed in harmony.

Stevan looked out the top of the cockpit canopy at where the top of the giant structure met the sky. The Command Wolf raised its head to look as well. Painted over the entrance, defaced but not totally wiped out by the pounding, scouring desert wind, was a once-renowned emblem. A stylized starship streaking around Zi, trailing tiny stars as it orbited. The Command Wolf voiced a soft, rumbling growl. Its vocal repertoire was limited, but it could express as much as with one growl as some humans could by talking until they were out of breath.

Stevan moved the control yoke slightly and the Zoid stepped forward into the hangar. When it came to a stop, Stevan slowly started to unbuckle his five-point cockpit harness. The Command Wolf lowered its head even as Stevan touched the control that opened the cockpit. He pushed himself out of the command chair and stepped off the Command Wolf's head and down to the ground, being careful not to let the bare skin on his hands or arms touch scorching hot metal which shade of the hangar had yet to cool.

Stevan walked slowly around the Zoid, wincing as muscles stiff from hours of sitting in one position ached in protest at being suddenly called into action. As he paced and stretched, he looked over the Command Wolf critically, his trained eye searching for any obvious signs of damage. His visual check turned up nothing that required attention, but he decided to run a full diagnostic scan. Later. Right now, he felt too tired to climb back into the Zoid's cockpit and perform that simple task. He lowered himself to a sitting position on the ferrocrete floor behind the Zoid, staring out through the hangar's gaping entrance. The truck and Gustav were coming down the street toward the hangar. Beyond them, Stevan knew, there was nothing to look at but barren wasteland. He couldn't remember being so tired of looking at desert for a long time.

The two transport vehicles finished their passage down the street and rolled into the hangar, which was easily large enough to accommodate them. Stevan lowered his head and covered his eyes with his hand to shield them from the cloud of dust that accompanied the truck and Gustav, which came to a stop farther back in the hangar.

Leah and Calypso climbed out of the vehicles. Stevan could feel their questioning gazes on him even before he looked back over his shoulder to see them.

"Welcome to Rocketown," he said.

At its peak, Rocketown, as the place was fancifully called, had been one of the most well known gathering places for Zoid warriors on the Central Continent. A retired warrior turned merchant and technician known only as Damon had started the place some two decades ago, and had built it up with blood, sweat, tears, and lots of cash into the only thing approaching civilization in that part of the badlands. The place had started as a Zoid depot. The "town" had come later, as Damon's employees built homes and the volume of traffic at the place increased.

How Damon had kept the bandits that called the region home from trashing the place and stealing everything in the first week Stevan had never heard. In fact, Damon had actually done business with the renegades from time to time. In its heyday, there was no better place to go than Rocketown if you wanted some complicated work done on your Zoid, and the kind of expertise Damon and his team offered drew all kinds of people. Besides warriors, Rocketown had attracted small-time traders transporters, and more than a few of the bandits and other criminals. With the varied and constantly population mix, Rocketown had developed a rather volatile dynamic. It was part of Damon's team's job to see that everyone "took it outside."

The three warriors remained silent for a long time. The only sound was the whisper of the desert wind moving the sands along on their never-ending migration. Stevan mentally urged the breeze to pick up and erase their tracks. The atmosphere inside the cavernous hangar, if not outright sinister, was somewhat foreboding. Calypso and Leah felt compelled to remain quiet and even found themselves breathing more softly.

Stevan heard something, and turned over his shoulder to look. The Command Wolf had turned around and was now facing the hangar exit. It was incapable of changing its facial expression, but Stevan had been with the Zoid long enough to read it pretty well. Right now it was on high alert, using all of its senses to search for any approaching threat.

The Zoid lowered its head a little after a minute and its posture seemed to soften, but its intent look never strayed from the hangar door. There was nothing visible through the door but sand-scourged buildings and sky. But Stevan saw more, and perhaps his Zoid did, too.

--------

_The Command Wolf's body was set in a crouch, ready to spring into action as soon as the hands on its controls directed it to, if not sooner. It would have been impossible for Stevan to match the Zoid's posture in the cockpit even if he had possessed the correct physiology, but he was just as alert as his mount. He leaned slightly forward in his command seat, breathing fast enough to irritate himself, eyeing his opponent on the viewscreen projected onto the orange cockpit shield. _

_Together, Zoid and pilot looked over their opponent. _

_The Red Horn stood some one hundred-fifty meters away. Its legs were spread wide apart in a stance designed for optimum weight distribution and balance. The position was similar to the Command Wolf's in some respects, but the maroon Zoid would never be able to fully match the Wolf's predatory bearing. Easily twice as large as the Command Wolf, the Red Horn's spike-headed face regarded Stevan and the Command Wolf malevolently._

How did I get myself into this? _Stevan wondered. _

_Damon was sitting in the cockpit of a Gustav positioned between the two Zoids but out of the firing line. He opened a commlink to both pilots. "When I give the signal," he said, "the fight is on. This match has no rules to speak of. Just watch where you're shooting. Damage to the town is frowned upon by management." Stevan glanced out of the cockpit canopy's left side. The outer edge of Rocketown was, in fact, less than half a kilometer away. "Damage to management himself," Damon added with a crooked grin, "is frowned upon even more."_

_Stevan took the last few moments before the battle would start to analyze the situation from a tactical standpoint._ Just like at the Academy _he thought_. No sweat _Aside from the obvious benefits of getting better handle on how his own strength and abilities matched up against his opponent's, it gave him something do think about beside how fast his heart was pounding. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, making his body shift into overdrive. It was a natural reaction, involuntary and uncontrollable, the reaction of those about to enter competition or combat (and Zoid battles were both)_ _since the two concepts had come into being. And since the human spirit had never lent itself to peace and co-existence, that was a very long time._

_The battle would take the form of a confrontation almost as old: strength versus speed. The Command Wolf was far from the fastest Zoid ever created, but it still possessed a lot of quickness and agility. It had originally been designed for raiding and small-unit leadership, and had only later wound up in the line-of-battle role. The Red Horn, by contrast, was essentially a mobile firing platform. It had enough speed to get from place to place and maybe a little extra for emergencies, but it relied on firepower, not mobility, to succeed._

_"Ready…" Damon said._

_--------_

"Where did the place get its name?"

Stevan was startled out of his reverie. The images of his first match disappeared. "What?" he asked, blinking.

"I said, why was the place called Rocketown?" Leah asked.

Stevan his first genuine smile in what seemed like ages. "It was named that because the first humans came to Zi on a spaceship of some kind," he told her, "and the guy who built the place was kind of a history buff." Actually, Stevan doubted half the professional historians on Zi knew as much about the subject as Damon.

There was another long, silent pause. Then Leah asked another question. "How long has the place been abandoned like this?"

Stevan picked himself up off the hangar floor, feeling much older than twenty-one as he answered. "Two years."

--------

Stevan woke up suddenly. One second, he was oblivious. The next, he was fully awake. He was aware that he was lying on the cold, hard hangar floor, and that the blanket he wrapped around him was totally insufficient to protect him from the chill of the desert night.

A vague, undefined, irritated thought about the climate flashed through his mind as he sat up, but it fled quickly. It was smothered by the equally indefinable heaviness that had fallen over his consciousness. Something was wrong.

He looked around the hangar as his eyes readjusted themselves to the darkness. Calypso was sleeping a few feet to his right and Leah a few feet to his left. They were both curled into balls that indicated the cold was having an effect on them, too. Looming over all three warriors were the two hulking transport vehicles. Neither they nor the two Zoids on the Gustav's trailers showed any signs of trouble when Stevan looked over his shoulder to examine them. He felt an ache between his shoulders as he swiveled his head back to the front, but the aggravation that accompanied that was also quickly drowned out.

He rubbed his forehead with his hand and closed his eyes as he sat. He listened carefully for any strange sounds, but heard only the wind blowing through the derelict buildings that surrounded him.

And the Command Wolf's low growls.

His eyes snapped open and he looked at the white Zoid. It was still facing the hangar entrance as it had been when he had fallen asleep, but now it was half-crouched and rumbling ominously.

Thrusting the inadequate covering away, he stood up and walked towards the Zoid. Its head turned very slightly in his direction (a movement that would have been imperceptible were it not for the mechanical beast's size) to acknowledge his presence, then recommitted its full attention to its vigil over the night.

"What's wrong?" Stevan asked softly. A different noise, to the casual listener different only in its slightly greater volume, was the only response he received.

He stared down the forsaken town's main street. The shapes and silhouettes of the buildings on either side were clear to him now. Again, nothing seemed out of place.

Except for a glimmer of orange-tinged moonlight reflecting off of something. Something silver and metallic, in the center of the street at the far end, where no such object could be.

He was in motion almost before he spotted the faintly glowing green dots in almost the same place. The Command Wolf's growl, now almost a roar, echoed through the hangar as it opened its cockpit shield. Calypso and Leah were wrenched from their chilled but peaceful sleep in a moment by the sound.

"Mount up!" Stevan yelled to his teammates as they pulled awoke. "They're here!" As the Command Wolf strode purposefully out of the hangar, Stevan remembered again.

--------

_The last embers of the campfire had died hours ago. Now the moonless desert night was lit by a different kind of flame._

_Stevan was crouching beside the Gustav. The thundering of heavy weapons ripped apart the silent sky. Despite the awesome display of pyrotechnics for which he was serving as an unwilling audience, Stevan found himself thinking how cold he was. The biting chill of desert night had replaced the oppressive heat of desert day._

_Zane's Godos fired off a salvo from the CP-13 "Wild Weasel" unit that it carried on its back. Stevan couldn't see what the target was, but he didn't think the shots had hit their mark. When the shells finished their whistling journey down-range, they spent their fury on unresisting sand._

_Return fire from the unseen enemy was not long in coming. A series of beam gun blasts streaked toward the Godos, which side-stepped with more agility than one would have thought the little Zoid capable of if one judged by appearances only. On the other side of the Gustav, Stevan could hear the heavy thump of the CP-07 cannon mounted on the back of the Molga piloted by Deke firing. The bulk of the transport Zoid kept him from seeing if Deke had scored a hit, leaving Stevan to guess at the success of the shot as a loud explosion announced that the 120mm shell had made contact with something, be it an enemy or merely another terrain feature._

_Stevan swore loudly, though no one could hear him. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so useless._

_The cacophony continued around him, but no shots came his way, leaving him feeling like he was in the eye of a storm. He was stuck in the role of spectator to the fight, which greatly irritated him. _

_Strangely, amid the near-deafening din of the battle, it was a relatively quiet sound that startled him. He spun around to investigate the low, angry noise that had made him jump and found the Command Wolf on the Gustav's trailer fighting to break free of the restraints that held it, snarling furiously._

_"I know how you feel," Stevan said to the Zoid aloud. Whether to fight or flee, the Command Wolf wanted to control its own destiny._

_The Command Wolf apparently heard Stevan, because it stopped struggling for a moment and looked down at the human, making him take an involuntary step back. Stevan stared up at the Zoid for a second, but his attention was drawn away quickly._

_There was a sound like an ocean wave breaking against the shore, and Stevan spun around again to see the sand parting ominously a few meters from the Godos. A dark, menacing shape halfway emerged from the hole in the desert, and in the flash of light that followed Stevan could see that it was a Guysack scorpion-type. The blast it had fired from the beam cannon that made up the "stinger" on the end of its segmented tail hit the Godos in the chest. The shot pierced the Zoid's thin armor easily, and as the Godos reeled backwards, Stevan could see arcs of electricity swirling around the newly opened wound. Before Zane could recover and return fire, the Guysack disappeared beneath the_ _sand again, invulnerable to attack until it surfaced to strike again a minute or so later, as Stevan knew it would. It was the Guysack's M.O., and a perfect tactic for bandits._

_Stevan breathed a profanity. It looked like Zane and Deke might be in trouble. And there was no way he could help._ Unless. . .

_Stevan eyed the thrashing Command Wolf again. Making a quick decision, he used the step on the side of the Gustav's trailer to climb up onto the flatbed. The Command Wolf stilled again for a moment, lowering its head to see what the human was up to. Most people who were unused to Zoids would have found the giant metal head and mouth (the mouth in particular) only a few feet away from them intimidating, but Stevan took it in stride. Sweeping his gaze over the trailer, trying to find the load restraint control._

There. _Stevan dropped to his knees beside the control, which was located near the trailer's edge, and examined it closely. The buttons were lighted, but the intermittent flashes of weapons fire had a detrimental effect on Stevan's night vision, making it hard for him to see what he was doing. _

_After half a minute of staring at the control box, Stevan swore again. It required a password to operate. _

_The Command Wolf's deafening growl made Stevan jump yet again, and he nearly fell off the trailer. He crabbed backwards as the Zoid locked its jaws around the restraint holding its right front leg in place. As hard as it tried, however, it couldn't bite through the lock._

I can help you with that,_ Stevan thought. Getting on his feet again, he moved closer to the Command Wolf. It turned its attention away from the restraint to look at him again, its snarl stopping him dead in his tracks._

_"It's alright," Stevan told the Zoid. "Let me help you out." Cautiously, he took another step forward. And another. The Command Wolf rumbled, but didn't try to stop him. In a few seconds, he was standing beside the Zoid's head._

_"Okay," he said to himself, patting the Zoid below the cockpit frame with his hand, "how about letting me in."_

_"Hey, kid!" a voice bellowed. Stevan and the Command Wolf turned to look at the Molga._

_"Stay away from that-agh!" Deke's warning was cut off a cry of surprise as a Guysack surfaced beneath his Zoid. Its pincer claws glowed yellow-gold as they sliced into the Molga's underbelly and threw it several meters into the air. Gravity returned the_ _Molga to the ground a second later. Luckily for Deke, the Zoid landed on its wheels, but t__he attack had damaged the system that drove the wheels and rendered the Molga immobile. _

_Stevan turned back to the Command Wolf in time to see the cockpit canopy swing open. Grinning, Stevan swung his legs over the cockpit frame and settled into the command seat. He had piloted Command Wolves at the Academy, so it only took a moment to remember where all the controls were. He closed the cockpit and strapped himself in, then gripped the control yoke firmly. _

_"Alright," he said to the Zoid. "Let's see what we can do about those restraints."_

_The Command Wolf began biting at the leg-locks again, but had no more success than before. Stevan swore. With the Molga out of the fight, it wouldn't be long before the bandits appeared again to finish the job. The Command Wolf growled again, but without the anger that had been apparent in its voice (or Stevan's) before. It seemed to be trying to communicate something._

What does he want me to do? _Stevan wondered. The Command Wolf put the lock in its mouth again and gave Stevan another growl, louder this time._

_"That's it!" Stevan said aloud. He pressed a button on the side of the control yoke with his right thumb. Crackling electron arcs appeared between the Command Wolf's fangs, producing a glow that Stevan could see from the cockpit. The Zoid bit down again, hard, and the restraint snapped in two. In another five seconds, both of the Command Wolf's front legs were free, and the rear leg locks were easily disposed of after that._

_"Way to go," Stevan said quietly. "Now let's see what we can do to help Zane and Deke."_

_With an exhilarated howl, the Command Wolf leapt off the trailer and into the battle._

_--------_

That image from the first battle Stevan and his Zoid had ever fought together melted away as they came to a stop in the middle of Rocketown's main street. A Rev Raptor turned the corner fifty meters ahead and faced them. There was a brief pause (probably less than a second) as the Backdraft Zoid took note of their presence. Then the air between the white Zoid and its maroon adversary was ripped apart by flashes of light. Stevan watched the twin blasts from the Command Wolf's paired beam cannon strike the Rev Raptor an instant after he fired. The answering fire from the Rev Raptor, its pilot a hair slower on the trigger and its aim thrown off as it took the hits, dug out two blackened pits at the Command Wolf's feet. Before it could recover, Stevan's second and third shots had frozen its command system. The Zoid crashed to the ground, but a second was coming right behind it.

Stevan froze. Standing still was suicide, but if he moved a stray enemy shot could find its way through the hangar door. Before the Rev Raptor could force him to make a decision, Calypso appeared on his cockpit screen. "Take that guy down or let someone else have a chance!"

Stevan yanked the control column to the right, and the Command Wolf sidestepped. A swarm of orange laser blasts followed a moment later by sparklike tracers and invisible explosive bullets ripped through the space where it had just been standing. The salvo didn't do enough damage to take the Rev Raptor down, but did enough to convince it to make a retreat (or "tactical withdrawal" as they had called it at the Academy) and re-enter the fight when the conditions were more favorable.

The numbers on the HUD clock caught Stevan's attention. It was almost exactly midnight. He smiled. If the Backdraft was going to keep on a regular schedule, staying alive might not be as a big a problem as it seemed.

Leah flew overhead in her Redler, whipping up clouds of dust that rolled down the street like tumbleweeds. The dragon Zoid reached the end of the street and then pulled up into a steep climb. The few shots directed at it from the lurking Backdraft Rev Raptors passed by harmlessly.

Stevan paused to consider the situation. The enemy Zoids seemed content to stay under cover for now, but it wouldn't be long before they tried again. The Chimeras couldn't afford to lose the transports, so they would have to stay near the hangar. And if they stayed near the hangar, sooner or later the Backdraft Zoids would overwhelm them. _Now what do we do?_

Before Stevan could ponder the problem any further, his train of thought was broken by the sound of more weapons fire. The Command Wolf turned ninety degrees to look at the GunSniper, which was firing down a side street, spending ammo and energy at wholesale rates. "Stevan," said Calypso (pausing briefly after that to adjust her aim), "we have to do something."

"I'm thinking," Stevan answered as the Command Wolf turned back to scan the main street again. Calypso had one flank covered, but Stevan guessed that the enemy Zoids would try to trap the Chimeras in a…

_Pincer maneuver. _A small building to his right collapsed, creating another reverberating crash and another cloud of dust and sand. A Rev Raptor stepped through the space where the building had been, plowing through the wreckage. The couple extra seconds it needed to do that was all Stevan required. He swung the Command Wolf around, aimed, and fired in almost one seamless motion. The Rev Raptor took the shot in at point blank range and pitched forward on to the ground directly in front of the Command Wolf, as inanimate as what remained of the building.

"Think faster," Calypso said, a current of urgency underscoring her words.

A new window opened on Stevan's screen. "There are two of them getting close to the main street again," Leah told her teammates. Her Redler, armed only with its claws and tail blade, was of little use from a combat standpoint in this battle. The spaces between the streets were too small, the chance of a crash during an attack too great. But it was useful as an airborne spotter.

"Where?" Stevan asked.

"A couple hundred meters in front of you. Get ready."

The Command Wolf put itself in a ready stance. Zoid and pilot stared down the street. He caught a glimpse of a menacing saurian shape, and fired down the street twice. He didn't hit anything, but he hadn't expected to. _You just stay back a minute,_ he told the Rev Raptor, which halted in mid-stride and backed into the shadow of the warehouse from whence it had come.

"More bad news," said Leah.

An angry snarl escaped Stevan's lips. "What?"

"There's are more Zoids entering the town. Bigger ones."


	6. South of Santa Fe

_Somewhere North of heaven_

_Where eagles fear to fly_

_The sun burns hot as the devil's gate_

_The desert meets the sky_

_And tattooed on my memory_

_Is the image of an angel's face_

_North of heaven, South of Santa Fe_

Stevan's eyes refused to focus on the heads-up display, making it impossible to read the chronometer. He tried to remember how long the Command Wolf had been walking across the desert, but with equally little success.

The air-conditioning system was working overtime to keep the cockpit cool, but was fighting a losing battle. Cold air was escaping and hot desert air was coming in through the jagged holes in the cockpit canopy. It was dry heat, without the slightest moisture or humidity, but Stevan was sweating profusely.

The perspiration mixed with blood. The left side if Stevan's shirt was already soaked, and some had dripped down to the cockpit floor. He was only dimly conscious of all this. The pain had long ago dulled into a buzzing, pulsating _noise,_ and foggy haze that permeated his vision.

Stevan knew he had to stay alert. They might still be coming after him. He swivled his head back and forth (conscious of the pain in his side surging quickly) and found it took an inordinate amount of effort. The horizon should have been a clear contrast between the golden sand and blue sky, but in Stevan's vision the two colors seemed to blur.

Satisfied that there was no immediate threat on either of his flanks, Stevan let his head fall back against the cockpit seat headrest again.

Not five hundred yards away was a small building. It was clearly nothing more than a dwelling place, and a very small one at that. It was absolutely alone. That was odd. Solitary individuals, human, machine, or otherwise, rarely survived long in the desert.

_Solitary. Alone. _Like he was now.

He realized with distress that he couldn't remember what had happened to Calypso and Leah. He couldn't even remember how he had been wounded.

He also realized that he had overlooked the house completely until it was practically right in front of him, and wondered if he could have missed an approaching enemy also. _Am I really that badly hurt?_ He glanced back and forth again as the Command Wolf moved slowly toward the little white house. There was a chance that the house wasn't there at all. He had heard of desert mirages. He had never seen one before, but there was a first time for everything. And there was also the possibility that he was hallucinating as a result of his injuries.

As he got closer, he squinted at the house, trying to make his vision clear. He noticed that while the house looked weather-beaten and run-down, no sand had drifted against its sides.

He was painfully thirsty.

The house really was quite small. The Command Wolf dwarfed it easily. Stevan wearily brought the Zoid to a stop and opened the damaged cockpit canopy. The Command Wolf crouched and lowered its head so that he could climb out. Unbuckling his harness was difficult (his fingers seemed to have lost all dexterity) and swinging himself over the side of the cockpit was an act of incredible exertion. He fell the last few feet to the ground. His balance deserted him, and he fell on his left side.

The Command Wolf looked down at him and rumbled its concern. Still laying in the dust, Stevan tried to examine the Zoid for damage. No problems jumped out at him, but in his present state he didn't trust himself to see a gun pointed at his face five feet away.

Slowly, painfully, he picked himself up, deciding as he did so that he probably had at least one broken rib. Clutching his side, he walked (although it was closer to a a stagger) towards the house's door.

He reached the door and almost fell again, exhausted by the effort. He leaned on the door and banged against it with his right arm, knowing that if anyone was inside, they probably would have seen the giant Zoid and come outside already.

To his complete surprise, the door started to swing open. Unable to shift his weight fast enough, he fell across the threshold, producing more pain.

He craned his neck and looked into the house. It was dark inside. Under normal circumstances, he would have been half blinded by stepping inside from the blazing desert sunlight. As it was, the details of the house's interior were totally indiscernible.

He gave up peering into the darkness and became aware that someone or something – he hoped it was some_one_ – was standing over him. _Someone opened the door._

Supporting himself with his right arm and keeping his left hand (which was now covered with blood) on his side, he moved his gaze slowly upward, because slowly was all he could manage. He saw a slender female form sheathed in a simple white dress. The face was a blur, until the woman bent her knees and stooped down beside him. For a brief moment, everything came into focus.

Shoulder-length blonde hair, a mix of varying golds and highlights. Deep blue eyes beneath elegant brows, a small, attractive nose, and slightly parted lips in a lovely, delicate heart-shaped face. A face that showed concern.

A face he knew well.

His mouth dropped open in shock. At that moment, his right arm gave out and as he dropped back to the floor the face became a blur again. _. . .How?_ he thought, but when he tried to speak the word aloud, his voice failed him as his arm had.

She slipped one arm around his shoulders, and took his right hand in hers. Her touch restored his strength; if only slightly, enough to pull himself to his feet. A wave of vertigo almost overcame him, and he nearly fell again. Glancing down as he steadied himself, he saw a small, glistening red pool where he had been laying. Slowly, she led him into the house (which was still too dark for him to see in), leaving a trail of crimson droplets that dotted the wood floor.

She helped him to a cot in a corner. He tried to sit down, but he ended up flopping awkwardly across it. The shadows spun around him, making his whole head ache. He closed his eyes tightly. When the pain subsided into the throbbing hurt that had become the accompanying dirge of his existence, he opened them again and was rewarded with another moment of clarity.

She was kneeling beside the cot, examining the bloody hole in his shirt, and, beneath that, his flesh. Her face grave, she began peeling the shirt away from the wound. He was shocked anew by his weakness as he tried to help her and found his heavy arms and hands barely up to the task. Together, though, they managed to remove the soaked, clinging garment from his torso. Blood dripped onto his face as they pulled the shirt over his head, and metallic wetness fleetingly dampened his parched mouth.

She looked at the wound again, and he heard her stifle a gasp as she saw the full extent of the damage. After considering for a moment, she stood up and walked to the other side of the room. His eyes strained to follow her, but couldn't pierce the darkness. He used his ears instead, listening intently to the unidentifiable sounds from across the room that meant she was still there, that she hadn't left him, that she hadn't just been a momentary delusion born of his injuries.

She returned a minute later. His gaze followed her as she kneeled down again and began cleaning the blood – some of it older, dried and caked to his skin, some of it still wet – from his torso with a sponge. When that was done, she returned to examining the wound. Gently but firmly, she applied pressure to the area with her fingers. An involuntary hiss of pain escaped his lips, and she stopped. She turned and looked directly at him for the first time since they had entered the house. He stared into her eyes, which seemed to be the one clear point in the blur around him.

She spoke, but he couldn't make out the words. _What?_ he mouthed, shaking his head. She leaned closer so he could hear better. Adrenaline gave his arms a momentary flash of strength. Impulsively, he reached out to her. Placing one hand on her back and the other in her hair, he pulled her closer to him. He kissed her, gently at first but then with more urgency. Her lips were soft. And moist, which made him notice how dry his own were and remember again how thirsty he was. Just as she seemed to relax and begin to accept the kiss, she pulled away.

He could tell through the blur that her face was flushed slightly, and she seemed unsure what to do. She turned her gaze away, staring off at nothing, then stood and crossed the room again. She came back with a canteen, which she offered to him. He took it and gulped the water with gusto. He tried to say "thank you," but even with the water, he could still only manage a whisper. But she understood, and smiled at him.

Her smile disappeared quickly. She turned and walked over by the door, opening the blind on a window that he hadn't even realized was there. Bright sunlight beamed into the room, illuminating a golden rectangle on the floor beside his cot. She stared out the window for a long time. _What's wrong?_ he thought. Too weak to pull himself up to walk to the window and unable to see out any other way, he was once again forced to rely on his ears.

He could hear nothing, until the Command Wolf split the silence with a warning howl. Then he could hear it: the low, rhythmic rumbling of approaching Zoid footsteps. He couldn't hear her when she spoke to him, but he could hear the sound that heralded his doom. Cruel irony.

They were coming for him.

For _him_. Not her. He tried to lift himself off the cot, but the pain in his side was awful. She turned around in time to see him fall back on to the cot. She hurried to his side and knelt again, putting her hand on his shoulder. She spoke again, a single word that he could make out by watching her lips. _Don't._

But he had to. It was his fight, not hers. He wished he could stay, wish he could ask her all the questions he wanted to ask so badly. But he lingered only a moment, enjoying the feel of her hand on his skin. Then he heaved himself up again, and the feeling was drowned by the agony. When he found himself sitting up, she had taken her hand away.

The act of standing triggered an aftershock in his side, but nonetheless he got on his feet and walked unsteadily toward the window. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dark by now, and the view outside was incomprehensible brilliance. But he could still hear them coming.

He lurched away from the window, and two staggering steps carried him to the door. He opened it and stepped outside. The Command Wolf turned to look at him, growling a greeting with a troubled undertone.

He turned around and found her standing in the doorway. He gestured at the Zoid and mouthed _Take it._

She shook her head.

_Get away_. His whisper was almost drowned by a desert breeze that dried the sweat on his forehead. _They want me._

She shook her head again, more vehemently this time. He could make out tears in her eyes as she spoke. _I won't leave you._

He turned again and looked at the Command Wolf, which was holding its head low, regarding him. What could he do?

He would have to fight. He stood no chance in his condition, but he had to try. He stumbled toward the Zoid, which opened the shattered canopy to admit him. Climbing into the cockpit was torture, but on his third attempt, he flopped into the cockpit seat. The damaged orange canopy swung closed and the Command Wolf raised its head as it turned away from the house to face its assailants.

There were three of them, Rev Raptors, maroon and black color schemes yielding no reflections to the sun. They advanced slowly but deliberately as he walked the Command Wolf out to meet them. He had to keep them away from the house.

The Raptors plodded on and finally came to a stop only a hundred meters away, seemingly daring him to make the first move.

_Their mistake_, he thought. He centered the glowing targeting reticle on the middle Rev Raptor and pulled his trigger.

He heard the crack of the dual beam cannons firing, saw the dazzling white blasts streak toward their target, reach it, and disappear. The Rev Raptor showed no signs of damage as the smell of ionized air reached Stevan through the holed canopy. It didn't even react.

Mystified, he fired a second time. Again, the shots winked out as they reached the Rev Raptor, like they had been swallowed by a black hole.

The three Rev Raptors began to move again, their grinning fang-lined mouths seeming to mock his failure. Snarling in frustration, he fired again and again as the three Zoids marched closer to him, but always with the same result.

Giving up on the cannons, he slammed the control column forward. The Command Wolf broke into a run from a standing start and leaped through the air toward the lead Rev Raptor. Stevan braced himself for the crash of metal as the two Zoids made contact, but it never came. The Command Wolf made a bone jarring landing in a crouched position, behind the Rev Raptor, which continued toward the house as if nothing had happened.

Stevan turned the Command Wolf around, and the Zoid and its human partner stared at the backs of the ghostlike Rev Raptors. Stevan squinted, closed his eyes altogether, and then opened them again, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

The house was gone. In its place was a large white object, larger than the house had been. Its appearance undefined and blurred from the heat and the haze that remained over Stevan's vision. Too dumbstruck at first to act, he walked the Command Wolf forward, following the Rev Raptors, which had stopped by the indistinct object.

It was a Command Wolf, its battered metal form pockmarked with bullet holes and scorch marks. The cockpit was a blasted-out wreck.

As Stevan realized all this, his world started to go dark.

--------

Stevan awoke to a persistent, low, thrumming sound. He couldn't place the noise, but he was able to identify it as having contributed to the similar sound in his dream, which he had assumed was a symptom of his pain.

More alarmingly, he couldn't remember where he was. The bed he found himself in was unfamiliar. This realization made what left of the sleep-fog dissipate in a second. He sat bolt upright as he snapped to full consciousness, breathing heavily. He hated having dreams. He had them only rarely, and when he did his dreams were never pleasant. _I thought you weren't supposed to be able to feel in a dream,_ he thought. His hand went to his left side. Sheepishly, he pulled it away. There was no wound there.

The thirst he had felt in the dream, however, _was_ there. He rolled out of bed and walked briskly to the small bathroom adjoined to the bedroom and gulped a cup of water. He leaned on the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The thin, unkempt hair on his chin and upper lip looked even more ragged than usual, and dark circles were beginning to appear around his eyes.

He turned around and looked back into the bedroom, and only then did he remember where he was: the Spirit Cats' WhaleKing. The thrumming sound was the enormous aircraft's engines.

He checked the digital clock by the bed. It was late morning. At cruising speed, the WhaleKing could have traveled halfway across the Central Continent already, or might even conceivably be over the ocean. That depended on what course it had taken.

He slid the shade cover off the portal in the bulkhead and looked outside. He expected to see clouds, but instead got a view of a landscape covered with rocky, spine-backed ridges and plunging valleys. A fairly substantial river – which name he should have been able to remember but couldn't - ran across the panorama. _Nice to see something other than desert, _he observed.

Any brightening effect that might have had on his mood was quickly swept away, however. It occurred to him that the past two times he had woken up, he had ended up fighting or fleeing for his life amost immediately. He made an effort to shake off the thought, but it lingered nonetheless.

He found his clothes on the floor. After pulling on the rumpled jeans, shirt and boots, he opened the coor and left the room.

The corridor was lined with small lights and handholds that could be used by a person to maintain his or her balance if the WhaleKing had to bank or pitch suddenly. The weak lights, near the ceiling, provided poor illumination. There was no need for the handholds at the moment, but when Stevan paused for a moment to get his bearings he could tell that the huge aircraft was in a shallow descent.

With that information in mind, Stevan started down the hallway, remembering the previous night.

--------

_Golden flashes from the Rev Raptor's laser cannons illuminated the Zoids like a strobe light as it came around the corner, catching Calypso by surprise. "That's it," she was saying, "we've got to get out of here before their reinforcments…" Static smothered the rest of her transmission as the Backdraft Zoid's shots struck home. _

_The salvo crushed the ammo feed system for the GunSniper's left-side gatling gun, setting off the shells still in the magazine. A fireball erupted from the GunSniper's left side and the gatling flew off. The Zoid was thrown sideways by the force of the blast and lay on its side, its underbelly a perfect target for a follow-up shot from the Rev Raptor._

_A shot the Backdraft Zoid never got a chance to deliver, as Stevan's wild barrage savaged the Rev Raptor a moment later, freezing its command system and_ _knocking out_ _most of the wall of the building behind it as well._

_"Calypso, are you OK?" Stevan asked, moving the Command Wolf closer to the fallen GunSniper and watching for more attackers. _

_He was relieved to see the black-and-silver Zoid pull itself slowly to its feet a moment later. "Good thing I had already used most of my ammo," she said. _

_"Stevan, Calypso, watch your back!" Leah shouted. The Command Wolf and GunSniper spun around to face off with a charging Rev Raptor, its head thrusting low and its blades extended with deadly intent. Before either of the Chimeras could pull the trigger, a hulking dark shape flew out of a side street and slammed into the Rev Raptor an avenging fury. In seconds, the Saber Tiger's claws and huge fangs had reduced the Backdraft Zoid to scrap._

_Rebecca gave them a smile as her face appeared on a new comm window. "Looks like you could use some help."_

_--------_

The sounds of the remembered battle gave way to the echo of his footsteps against the metal floor as he reached the end of the corridor, where he was comfronted with a door. Finding the control, he touched it and the door slid out the way into the walls. He found himself in what seemed to be the WhaleKing's living area.

The room was appointed with basic but relatively attractive furniture (all bolted to the floor, of course.) The wall on the right was dominated by a large window, through which light from the passing skyscape flooded in. On the left was a small kitchen area. There was another sliding door like the one had entered through on the far wall. Calypso and Leah were sitting on the couch and chair, looking as tired as he did.

"Hey, guys," he greeted them.

"If it isn't sleeping beauty," Leah commented.

Stevan's face, which had momentarily brightened, rearranged itself into an annoyed frown. "Don't start with me." He considered sitting down, but decided against it. He settled for leaning against a wall instead, his arms crossed over his chest. "Any sign of our hosts?"

"Nope," Calypso replied.

"No great loss," remarked Leah. "The Ice Princess isn't a great conversationalist."

Stevan considered admonishing Leah for her ingratitude, but decided against it. Instead, he merely nodded, then pushed off the wall and walked over to the window.

"Nice view," he commented. And then added, as he turned away from the pane: "Reminds me of the area around the Academy."

He felt his teammate's curious, surprised stares on him. He never talked about his time at the Academy. To hear him mention it must have been a shock for Calypso and Leah, almost as if he had said something obscene. He glanced at them as he returned to his position against the wall, and they looked away quickly. He was a little surprised himself. _What made me think of the Academy?_ he wondered. The landscape below bore only a superficial resemblance to the area around the Academy, which was hundreds of kilometers away on the Central Continent's Northern coast.

_That dream_, he realized. His eyes snapped shut involuntarily, and he felt his whole body tense. Just as he became aware that he was probably attracting more attention from his teammates, he heard a door slide open.

He opened his eyes in time to see Rebecca walk into the room and the door on the far wall slide closed behind her. She was dressed in a gray jumpsuit, and her silver hair was tied back out of the way in a pony tail. In contrast to the Chimeras, she exhibited no ill effects from the chaotic night before.

"Good morning," she said. The Chimeras returned the greeting.

Stevan pushed away from the wall and faced her. "I wanted to say thanks for saving our necks last night," he said to Rebecca with a nod. He paused, then added: "And I wanted to apologize for what I said at the diner in Sol."

She smiled. "Consider it forgotten," she said. "And you're welcome."

"Where exactly are we going?" asked Calypso.

Rebecca walked over to the window and examined the same view Stevan had taken in earlier. "We're not going anywhere," The WhaleKing was still steadily descending, and now the Chimeras could feel it begin to gently bank to the right beneath them. It was circling to land. Rebecca turned back to them.

"We're here."

--------

**Author's Notes: **Lyrics to "South of Santa Fe" by Brooks & Dunn are copywright 1998 Arista Records. The dream sequence in this chapter was ripped off from-…er, _inspired by_ the music video for that song. 

In case you somehow haven't already figured it out, passages in italics are flashbacks.


	7. The Hunter and the Hunted

The young pilot could hear a steady hum from overhead as his white-painted GunSniper and the identical one piloted by his partner strode purposefully across the rolling hills that surrounded the ZBC base. The Zoid craned its neck to look up, allowing him to make out the shapes of two Pterases as they passed over him, their wings and feet emitting a golden glow. The glow was a visual side-effect of the anti-grav field those parts of the Zoids projected, which was what allowed them to fly despite having almost no wing area and no thrusters.

The glow also made a Pteras an easy target for enemy ground fire in a night battle, but that wasn't likely to be a concern on this particular evening. The sun was sinking low in the sky, but full darkness was almost an hour away, and the matter would probably be resolved by then. Besides, the Zoid the Pterases and GunSnipers were tracking didn't seem inclined to fire its weapons anyway.

The pilot opened a commlink to the base's control room. "Rook, Knight One," he said to the image of the commtech on his screen. "Knight is approaching phase line Bravo and should be in position in less than five minutes. Crow just passed over us headed in the same direction."

"Roger, Knight," the commtech said. His gaze never met the pilot's; it swept back and forth, giving the man a somewhat amusing shifty-eyed look. Knight One knew he was actually monitoring several display screens in front of him that were invisible to the pilot. "The bogey is still headed your way from the southeast and Bishop is right behind him."

"Roger," Knight One said. "Rook, please identify Bishop."

There was a pause as the commtech's eyes continued to sweep back and forth before he said: "Bishop is two GunSnipers with electro-net guns."

"Copy," Knight One said. He closed the commlink and the window on his screen winked out. His Zoid shook rhythmically beneath him as its clawed feet propelled it across the undulating terrain. Ahead an to his right was a grove of giant trees, easily taller than most Zoids. To his left, the long ridge that marked phase line Bravo stretched all the way across his field of vision. _Electronets?_ he thought. _They must want to take this one down clean._

He opened a new commlink, and Knight Two appeared on his screen. "Any ideas, Terry?" he asked.

The female pilot shook her head. "Your guess is as good as mine, James," she said. "Maybe it's a drill," she ventured after a minute.

"Maybe." James closed the commlink and checked the digital map window in the lower left-hand corner of his screen. They were in position. He cut the throttle and the GunSniper smoothly came to a stop. The raptor Zoid scanned the area, the horn-like sensor antennae on the back of its head probing its surroundings.

A new commlink window opened. The caller wore the same off-white jumpsuit as James and Terry, but had the heavy helmet of an air Zoid pilot. "Rook, Knight, this is Crow One. Crow has visual contact with the bogey and Bishop. Bogey is moving through the forest toward Knight's position."

"Copy, Crow," the commtech acknowledged. "Knight, stop the bogey and wait for Bishop to catch up. Crow, continue monitoring."

James' "Roger" was followed quickly be the Pteras pilot's. James glanced off to his left at the ridgeline as Terry walker her GunSniper past him and faced the forest. "Rook, Knight One. Could we get on the ridgeline and take this guy down with our sniper rifles?" he suggested.

"Negative, Knight One. Do not, repeat, do not fire on the bogey."

James' face twisted into an incredulous expression. "_What?" _he shouted. "How are we supposed to stop this guy if we can't fire?"

The commtech gave him a glare. "The bogey has taken no hostile action, and command has ordered us to do likewise. Wait for Bishop to show up and use their net guns."

James let out an annoyed sigh. "Copy," he said, terminating the connection and switching back to Terry. "I don't like this one bit."

"Me neither," she replied. The two GunSnipers continued to peer at the treeline, their bodies set in ready crouches. James switched on his Zoid's infrared scanner and examined the picture it painted on the multi-function display in the center of his control column. He spotted the bright orange flare of a heat source just as the sun's fading rays caught a flash of white in the forest. The GunSniper hissed.

"Here he comes!" Terry called. Almost before the words had left her mouth, a Command Wolf burst out of the woods slightly more than half a kilometer away. No longer forced to slow down by the trees, the Zoid quickly switched to a full run.

"Rook, Knight One," James called as he moved his GunSniper to intercept the dashing Command Wolf. "Knight has contact with one Command Wolf." He squinted at the distant Zoid and wished it would slow down enough for him to get a better look. "It looks like….it looks like it has ZBC insignia!" he said.

"That's correct, Knight One," the dour commtech replied. "Block it and wait for Bishop."

The Command Wolf and the pair of GunSnipers were closing at a combined speed somewhere around four hundred kilometers per hour, and James was suddenly, uncomfortably aware that he would make a nice target for an easy, no-deflection shot if the Command Wolf pilot suddenly decided to swearing off his weapons wasn't such a good idea.

_Explain to me again how we're supposed to stop this guy,_ he though to himself. _GunSnipers aren't designed for melee combat_.

Terry's Zoid was about fifty meters ahead of him and to his left, running at the Command Wolf head-on. As James watched, the Command Wolf made a sharp left turn away from Terry and began to run at an angle across his field of vision. He steered his GunSniper to meet it and eased off the throttle. The GunSniper stretched its neck toward the oncoming Zoid and vocalized a sound that was half screech and half roar.

The Command Wolf pilot, whoever he or she was, wasn't just shy about firing their weapons: they seemed determined to avoid a confrontation altogether. The Command Wolf skidded to a stop, then reared up and wheeled around on its rear legs, ready to run back the way it had come. That plan was spoiled by the two GunSnipers codenamed Bishop One and Two emerging from the forest.

For a couple of seconds, the Command Wolf froze.

Then it sprang forward, charging straight at Bishop Two. _Not smart,_ James thought. He could just imagine the other GunSniper pilot whispering "Come to papa" or something to that effect as he lined up the shot with his electro-net gun.

Bishop Two waited until the Command Wolf was just under one hundred meters away before he fired, just to make sure the shot would hit. James heard the _crack_ of the one-shot gun that replaced the 80mm cannon usually mounted on a GunSniper's chest. The round sped towards the onrushing Command Wolf, and it seemed there was no chance it would miss.

At the last possible second, the Command Wolf simply let its legs drop out from under it. The fifty-ton Zoid dug a shallow trench in the ground beneath it as it slid forward almost on its belly. The net gun projectile flew harmlessly over the Zoid and ended its flight some distance behind it, sticking up out of the ground like a spear.

In the split-second James had taken his eyes off the Command Wolf to watch the net gun projectile, the Command Wolf exploded back to its feet and leaped forward, covering the twenty or so meters that still separated it from Bishop Two. Its jaws were opened wide, and when it slammed into the surprised GunSniper they clamped shut around the smaller Zoid's neck. The Command Wolf finished its leap by landing on its feet with an impact that must have made the pilot's teeth rattle.

That would have been nothing compared to the effect the attack must have had on Bishop Two, however. The GunSniper was yanked violently off its feet and slammed back to the earth on its back, where it lay still.

The Command Wolf spun to face its three remaining antagonists. Its mouth opened in a snarl, revealing gleaming silver fangs. For a couple of seconds, the three ZBC pilots hesitated. It was in that brief moment that James was able to look directly into the Command Wolf's cockpit.

The transparent orange canopy was suffused with firey glow by lights and displays within. It should have been easy to see the pilot, maybe even make out the warrior's appearance.

But there was no pilot. James could see the command seat, empty, the five-point harness hanging limp.

James didn't know if any of the other ZBC pilots could see this, but he didn't have any time to consider it. The warrior codenamed Bishop One, after seeing Bishop Two be brutalized by the rogue Zoid, decided that the rules of engagement were out the window. He opened fire with his tri-barrel laser guns at the Command Wolf, which was still standing next to the downed GunSniper. Displaying the same amazing reflexes it had used to dodge the net moments before, the Command Wolf dodged out of the way. The hail of laser fire meant for the Command Wolf shredded soil only a few meters away from the cockpit of Bishop Two's fallen Zoid, which did nothing to improve that warrior's already shaken state of mind.

The Command Wolf broke into a run again, blowing past Bishop One's GunSniper and heading for open territory. Terry and James chased after it, leaving Bishop One to check on his teammate, whose Zoid's Command System had been frozen by the Command Wolf's punishing physical attack.

"Rook, Knight One," James said, opening the comm link again. "Bogey Zoid has attacked. Bishop Two is down." The Command Wolf was heading back toward the forest, and the GunSniper turned to follow it almost without any control input from James. "The Zoid is heading back into the woods. Knight is in pursuit."

The Command Wolf and pursuing GunSnipers dashed through the treeline and deeper into the woods. What little daylight there was left could not penetrate through the branches of the towering trees, leaving the forest shadowy and dark. About a hundred meters ahead, James could catch occasional glimpses of Terry's GunSniper and their quarry weaving between giant trees. The infrared display allowed him to keep track of the Command Wolf easily when it would have probably evaded less well-equipped Zoids.

The Command Wolf abruptly stopped its headlong run and spun one hundred eighty degrees so that it faced the trailing GunSnipers. Only a few mammoth trees now separated hunter and hunted. Terry was closer than he was, so he brought up the commlink to her again. "Terry, watch out."

On the screen, he saw her smile wickedly. "No sweat," she responded. "Looks like he's going to make this easy."

A flash of silvery light briefly illuminated the forest as James' GunSniper, still moving at the best speed it could sustain in the maze-like woods, rounded one particularly large oak. At the same moment, the commlink window to Terry filled with static, and he found himself in a large clearing, where the Command Wolf and Terry's GunSniper stood only meters apart.

Terry's GunSniper was staggering backwards as though it had just taken a serious hit, but James couldn't see any signs of damage on the raptor-Zoid. The Command Wolf whirled and bolted into the forest, pausing only long enough to give James an angry growl. James was about to chase after it, but hesitated. Terry's Zoid was still swaying drunkenly, barely staying on its feet.

"Terry? Terry, what's wrong?" he called, hoping that only the visual link was out.

Terry's response was rendered incomprehensible by roaring static. James could hear only "Someth-…-ong…ca-…get…-ontrol," before the transmission was completely drowned out. James edged his Zoid closer, the GunSniper peering at its counterpart and vocalizing what seemed to be its concern. The other GunSniper lurched one final time, then seemed to steady itself. It rounded on James Zoid and and roared, its head held low and its fangs bared.

James' GunSniper took a step back, as surprised as its pilot at the other Zoid's apparent hostility. Before either had a chance to do anything else, Terry's GunSniper attacked, slamming into James' mount with bone-jarring force. The two GunSnipers crashed to the ground in a tangled heap.

James' head banged against the side of the cockpit canopy, his safey harness insufficient to compensate for the impact. His vision became distorted as he rode the ragged edge of consciousness, then cleared, just in time to see a silver blur streak overhead and disappear into the darkness of the forest.

James cursed at the throbbing pain in the side of his head, then cursed again when he saw that his command system was frozen. On the bright side, however, the commlink was clear again.

"What the…" Terry paused, apparently unable to think of an obscenity strong enough to fit the situation. "What was _that?_"

James gazed off into the forest, which was now almost totally enveloped in darkness. "I don't know."

--------

_A set-up. It _must_ have been a set-up._

That was the only conclusion Stevan could reach as his Command Wolf dashed up one side of the latest in a series of small rises and started down the other. The Zoid's break-neck pace sent thundering aftershocks up his spine, aggravating muscles already sore from too much time spent in the cockpit over the past two days and creating a new flash of agony with every stride. Stevan held the control column as though his very survival depended on maintaining his grip, his teeth clenched against the pain, eyes darting from the HUD to other displays to the view through the sides of the Command Wolf's canopy.

All around him there were nothing but small, undulating hills. None were more than ten meters high at its peak, obstacles of little consequence to the swift, fifty-ton beast running recklessly through them. To Stevan it seemed as if they had been placed there just to annoy him, to block his view of his surroundings and render the Command Wolf's sensors useless so that he never knew what awaited him over the next one, or one to his right, or his left, or behind him. He had named his team the Chimeras. Now it seemed he was being haunted by them.

These thoughts hovered at the back of his mind, a fear he was only barely conscious of nibbling away at the edged of his psyche. He wasn't panicking, although if he had been his actions probably would have been about the same. His inability to pinpoint his tormentor's locations was unimportant. What mattered is that they were there.

So he concentrated on more immediate concerns: staying ahead of the enemies he knew were behind him and staying alert so he could react if any of the phantoms he imagined really did materialize from somewhere else. Taking it one hill at a time.

_Hope for the best, prepare for the _worst, he thought. That was one of the principles of combat he had learned at the Academy. Remembering the maxim brought him no comfort. Had he prepared?

Rebecca had told them that her team's base was in the mountain range, inaccessible to large transports. The WhaleKing had landed at the base of he mountains and they had started out from there, the Chimeras in their Zoids and Rebecca and her team in Saber Tigers. (And those teammates were another mystery. None of the Chimeras had seen any one but Rebecca on the WhaleKing, and all attempts at making conversation with the pilots of the Spirit Cats other two Saber Tigers via commlink had been blocked.) Their trek had gone on for almost two hours, ending only when a group of Rev Raptors had ambushed them, targeting the Chimeras but not Rebecca's team.

That was when Stevan decided that Rebecca had set them up. He should have known. Everything that had happened was his fault. He was the team's leader. He was responsible.

But it didn't make any sense. If Rebecca was working with the Backdraft Group, why had she helped them out at Rocketown the night before? The Backdraft gained nothing by bailing them out in the desert only to let them be killed the next day in the mountains. For that matter, if she was with the Backdraft, why had she warned them to be careful the morning before the attack on their base?

But she had to be working with them, because the attacking Backdraft forces had taken pains to avoid firing at her Zoid or those of her escorts. It didn't make any sense, and wouldn't have even if Stevan had been able to focus his mental energy on pondering it. Like his fears about what lay behind each rise, these questions swirled at the border between thought and subconscious, indefined concern.

Stevan tried the commlink again as the Command Wolf put another hill behind it. He greeted the harsh, noisy static with a curse. His comm system was still being jammed.

The Command Wolf suddenly skidded to a stop, its metal feet fighting for purchase on the shifting rocks beneath them. Stevan was thrown violently forward, the five-point harness preventing him from injuring his head or torso on the control column but digging into his body painfully nonetheless.

A Rev Raptor lunged out from behind a rise, the timing of its surprise attack spoiled by the Command Wolf's abrupt halt. Stevan wondered how his Zoid had anticipated the ambush, but that thought was swept aside by a torrent of anger as Stevan slammed the control yoke forward, bellowing inarticulate rage at the Rev Raptor. He hated the very sight of the Zoids.

The Rev Raptors that had attacked the Chimeras in the mountains had fought far better than the ones they had encountered previously. Their tactics were better and heir reactions were quicker. But not quick enough. If the Rev Raptor was surprised by the failure of its bushwhacking attempt, it was totally unprepared for its erstwhile quarry to leap forward, fangs bared with deadly intent.

The Command Wolf hit the Rev Raptor with a gonging crash. Sparks flew to the ground as the two Zoids' metal hides ground together. The Command Wolf's jaws snapped at the Backdraft Zoid's neck, but failed to find it. The sheer force of the impact hurled the Raptor backward and lifted it several meters off the ground before gravity's mighty hand shoved it back down. It staggered, giant talons trying vainly to bite into the rock-strewn terrain before it finally dropped, completing a pratfall that might have looked somewhat humorous to a detached observer.

Stevan brought his targeting crosshairs down on the enemy Zoid's prone form, but before he could pull the trigger, he was thrown around in the cockpit again, this time backwards against the seat. The Command Wolf sprang forward, but its timing was less perfect this time. A laser blast tore into its right rear leg, failing to do any critical damage to the leg but leaving a scorched, sparking scar on the armor plate that protected it.

The Command Wolf came down and immediately bounded forward again, barely missing the head of the fallen Rev Raptor as a second one, the one that had fired the laser shot, took up the pursuit. The Command Wolf had overruled its pilot, somehow knowing that the time Stevan would have taken to finish off the first Backdraft Zoid would have given its counterpart time to gun them down.

Stevan wondered what accounted for his Zoid's almost prescient reflexes, and whether it was worse to merely expect his persecutors to resume their attacks or actually have them do so.

The chase continued.

--------

A laser barrage swarmed around the Command Wolf's position, wreaking havoc on the terrain but missing their target. Stevan's hands jerked the controls, and the Command Wolf popped out from behind the monumentally huge boulder it was crouching behind long enough to return fire. He yanked the column again, but the Command Wolf needed no encouragment from him to duck back again just before a second incoming salvo rent the air and the stony slope.

The enemy Zoids continued to blaze away at the rock, seemingly determined to reduce it to rubble if their target wasn't going to leave its shadow. A laser shot found a weak point in the boulder and chipped away a two meter-wide chunk, which flew off down the hill. Smaller stones and pebbles showered the Command Wolf, making a rattling sound that was quickly lost in the din of the continuing fire.

Stevan gritted his teeth, unconsciously hunching down in his seat as if he could make himself a smaller target that way. The Command Wolf growled as they repeated the shoot and move pattern. "I know," he said in response to the empty cockpit.

_This is not good._ It wouldn't be long before the Backdraft Zoids managed to work around the hulking devil's-back and attack from from behind and above as well as from in front and below. Then the rock would afford him no protection.

He repeated the pattern again. Pop out, shoot, pop back in. Could he escape over the back of the mountain before they could cut off that route as well? Zoid and pilot glanced back over their shoulders to examine the incline. _No._ It would take a couple of precious minutes to negotiate the slope at a safe pace, and the Backdraft Zoids would gun them down in mere econds if they tried. The terrain was treacherous, and trying to take the rise quickly held just as great a risk of disaster.

A Rev Raptor broke cover and tried to venture closer. It quickly payed the price for its boldness. Stevan aimed and fired by reflex. His fire knocked the Raptor off its feet, sending it on a sliding, rolling tumble down the incline that offered him a sobering preview of the fate that awaited him if the Command Wolf missed its footing in a desperate dash up the hill. The Rev Raptor reached the bottom and lay still. The bombardment from the surviving Backdraft Zoids seemed to increase in intensity.

Another shard of rock broke off, flying almost straight up, startling Stevan and narrowly missing the Command Wolf as it came back down. A rear attack would be a moot point if the enemy Zoids managed to blast away the monolith. Then he and the Command Wolf would be utterly exposed on the mountain side. The side of the rock that faced his persecutors was already blackened by scorch marks, and its surface, previously relatively smooth, was now pitted and chipped. It was only a matter of time.

The thundering crossfire went on. Destructive energies sufficient to level a city block slashed back and forth without the slightest practical effect except to slowly wear away outstanding features of the gradient until the time when there would be nowhere left to hide.

Stevan became aware of a Rev Raptor that had managed to get around a smaller rise and flank him. A couple of shots were enough to convince it to step back out of the line of fire. But sooner or later it would manage a dash across the gap to the next large irregularity, and then there would be nothing he could do. And even if he could hold this one off, another would work its way up on the other side. Again, it was only a matter of time.

The Command Wolf roared, its frustration easily discernible. "I know,"Stevan said again, softly.

Their time was almost up.

--------

A rumble. _There is nowhere left to run_, said the one.

An answering rumble, somewhat angry. _I am tired of running, _answered the other.

_So am I. _A pause. _If they get behind us, we will probably not survive._

_I know. I have already calculated the odds,_ the second one said. A longer pause. _It seems we are out of options. _

_I could subvert them, _the first suggested.

A low, glutteral sound that spoke of deep turmoil and indecision. _No._

_Why?_

_Because that…_a cry of suppressed rage. _Because _this_…is not how it is supposed to be. _

A longer pause as the first sensed what its fellow wanted to do, was fighting against itself _not_ to do. _I understand. __But it would not work. Let me take them._

_NO._ More forceful this time, more strident.

_We must do it, and quickly. There is no other way._

_There is one._

Concern, contemplation. _You would not survive._

_With your help, I could. _

More consideration. The first was mulling the problem, wrestling with it. _I am unsure._

_Decide. It is as you said: we must act quickly._

The first was a bit more certain. _What of him? _

_He will be alright, _the other said. _He has done well. He has been a worthy comrade. _A deep growl as it tried to convey what it felt. _But now it is up to us. We must do it. For our sake and his. _

_Then do it. _There was no more hesitation. _I am ready._


	8. Aftermath

The first thing Stevan became conscious of was that he was warm. Uncomfortable, as though he was laying on a mattress that had had its springs replaced with jagged stones. But warm.

The next things he was conscious of was that unlike the last time he had woken up, he was not afraid.

_He was terrified now. There was no denying it. The delusions of invincibility that came from riding in fifty tons of composite metals, a mechanical beast, an instrument of destruction that was also _alive_, were gone, blown away as surely as the pieces of the mountain that were even now disintegrating under the Backdraft Zoids' barrage. He flinched with every booming weapon shot that flew his way, and his hands shook as they held the controls with a white-knuckled grip._

Images coalesced into focus from the vague blurs of color that filled his world. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. They were just memories. Weren't they? For a moment he was still cornered on the hillside.

Where was he, really?

He slowly opened his eyes, but at first gained no further insight into his location. He could see nothing but a slowly shifting, swirling gray haze. He frowned, annoyed, and for the first time the idea of moving occurred to him. He slowly rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow, and peered downwards.

The haze was less thick here, and after a moment he could make something out. He was laying on bare ground, hard and lightly covered with thin, wet grass. The surface was rolling and uneven, like the mountainside where they had trapped him, but on a smaller scale. His back and neck ached badly from laying there for…how long?

The haze made it impossible to deterime the time of day. He checked his digital wristwatch, and frowned again as he saw that it was dark. He slowly eased himself into a sitting position and looked around.

Everywhere the grayness permeated his surroundings. He decided it was a type of fog or mist. The air was full of moisture, dampening the exposed skin on his face, arms and hands like a steam bath. But his mouth and throat were dry, parched.

Trying and failing to dispel the fog that seemed to have filled his mind as well as his vision, he managed to get on his feet. He stopped to listen, hearing almost total silence. The only noise was the almost undetectable whisper of the swirling mist…and, somewhat distant, the sound of moving water. There was water nearby.

His consciousness latched on to that thought, grasping it tenaciously. Stiffly, he began to walk towards the sound. He became aware that he was moving steadily downhill. The terrain was fairly level, relatively free of major hazards that could trip him, but the ground had disappeared down into the vapor when he had stood up.

He had gone only about a dozen steps when his leading foot failed to find a place to come down. He flailed for a couple of seconds, then tipped forward and fell, only just managing to catch himself with his hands and keep himself from landing on his face. The miasma suddenly took on a more threatening aspect. Now it seemed to be a conscious, malicious force, determined to leave him groping blindly until he wandered off a precipice.

In the distance, he could still hear the river, or stream, or brook, or whatever it was. Shaking his head, he began to crawl forward on his hands and knees toward the water's call.

It was slow going, but probably faster than he would have managed walking. He made his way down the gently sloping hillside for about fifteen or twenty yards and suddenly found himself at the water's edge. Heedless of the mud that caked on his jeans, he bent down and drank, dipping his cupped hands into the flow and lifting them quickly to his mouth before all of the water could flow out between his fingers. It was cool and tolerably clear. He drank at least a dozen double-handfulls before stopping.

Satisfied, he drew back and looked around again. The water was quite shallow. He guessed that it was probably a stream that branched off from one of the numerous moderately-sized rivers that ran through the mountains – if he was actually still in the mountains. Of that he was reasonably certain, although the warmth in a place where the climate rarely rose above a chilling cold, puzzled him. Regardless, the all-consuming gray cloud was too thick for him to even make out the opposite bank of the stream, which couldn't be more than a couple of yards away.

Refreshed by the drink, he began an attempt to reasonably assess his situation. He was sure that this was not the same hillside where the Backdraft Zoids had run him down.

Waiting for the final attack, hovering painfully on the edge of total resignation, hunkered down in his cockpit.

That was his last memory. He could recall nothing more. So where was he? What had happened after those harrowing moments in the Command Wolf?

_The Command Wolf_. Where was it? He made another, more urgent attempt to pierce the haze. He couldn't see the Zoid anywhere, although it was theoretically possible it was laying ten feet away and he simply couldn't see it. He returned to staring off into the distance straight ahead, across the almost-unseen brook, and thought.

He had no idea where he was. He had no idea how much time had passed between his last memories and when he had woken up a few minutes before. Then, time seemed to be running out. Now, he seemed to be cut off from time. He seemed to be alone, but he couldn't be sure. He came to the disturbing realization that someone or something blessed with superior sight or other senses could be watching him at that very moment. He shivered involuntarily.

Just then the mist seemed to grow very slightly thinner. For the first time he could see beyond three feet, to the other side of the stream and beyond.

Beyond was a hulking dark mass. He recoiled, springing backwards and landing in a crouch, staring at the misshapen, menacing shadow. Part of him wanted the mist to dissipate further or at least stay the way it was so he could figure out what the thing was. Another part of him, maybe the part that had made his breathing become quick and shallow, wanted the mist to close again and let him pretend he was still alone.

The first part's wish was granted. More and more of the shape and became visible, revealing its full, immense size. So, too, the details of the mass became discernible. Realization dawned on Stevan as he realized what the thing was.

It was a Rev Raptor. Or, perhaps more accurately, it _had been_ a Rev Raptor. Burned from within and without, it was a lifeless shell, in appearance and activity little more than carven stone. New memories flooded back.

_Something was closing in on all sides, something other than the Backdraft Zoids and totally different. It was a _presence_, enveloping him and making him a part of itself. In a moment, everything changed._

_Fear was gone, replaced by fury, fury like what had now and then risen to the surface during the long pursuit, but far more powerful. Fury like he had never known, instinctive, animal. _

_He would run no more, he would hide no more, he would cower no more. Running, hiding, cowering, that was not who he was. _

_He was the predator. The others were prey._

Stevan slumped, then fell, flopping on the ground, hands coming up to his face, pressing hard against his scalp. "No." The word was quiet, a murmur, a groan.

_The Command Wolf's mouth opened wide in a roaing howl that echoed off the mountainsides. Its fangs glowed, sparked, emitting energy that formed into a red-white sphere between its jaws, beautiful and terrifying. The Zoid leapt out from behind the rapidly diminishing rock. It charged down the hillside, straight at the surprised Rev Raptors. _

_The sphere radiated heat, scorching off in seconds every shred of vegetation that had somehow managed to grow on the rocky slope. Gray rock scorched black, wearing away as much in seconds as a it would have in a century of subjection to natural forces. The Rev Raptors slowly backed away, then thrashed madly as the sphere's awesome destructive force took its toll. _

"No…"

_The Command Wolf ranged over the hillside, moving with unbelievably fast, wielding the deadly sphere with devesting effect. It reveled in the brutal attack, the revenge, the destruction of every enemy Zoid on the mountain. One by one the Backdraft Zoids fell._

_And through all of this Stevan felt his hands on the control column, moving in co-operation with the Command Wolf's movements. He felt his mind, his _soul,_ in agreement with the mad lust for and joy in destroying and killing. He and the Command Wolf and the presence were all one, a single entity. They were…_he was_…the hunter. The survivor. He would hunt, and survive._

_The rest would be hunted, and perish._

"No…"

_The last Rev Raptor fell. Stevan felt himself being enveloped again, this time physically. Something coiled around him, wrapping up his entire body. Before he could struggle or even make sense of what was happening, he felt himself leave the cockpit seat. There was a feeling of moving at impossible speed, flying, how far or to where he could not tell. He felt transparent, like his body had become a phantom that existed outside the absolutes of time, space and mass that he knew. Then he was being eased to the ground._

He remembered no more. The past, and the present, slowly faded into darkness again.

--------

Calypso's face was set in a scowl as she stared at the pile of sticks in front of her. A spark caught, creating a pathetically thin trail of smoke that rose uncertainly from the little heap. She crouched down even further than before and blows at the smoke, which, instead of spreading and then creating flame, contrarily disappeared entirely.

Calypso's expression changed to a full-fledged glare as she stared malevolently at the invisible wind, which was barely strong enough to blow wisps of red hair over her forehead but had easily thwarted every attempt she had made to start a fire. These efforts were made in classically humorous fashion, with two sticks, which only enhanced Calypso's irritation.

Momentarily giving up on the stick pile, Calypso stood up, brushing dust away from her rumpled black jumpsuit. Hands on her hips, she looked down at the recalcitrant would-be fire in disgust before becoming aware of Leah in her peripheral vision.

"What?" she asked her. Leah took a step back as Calypso looked at her, apparently startled by the simmering fury in her violet eyes.

"Are you sure starting a fire is even a good idea?" Leah asked cautiously. Receiving no answer but Calypso's continuing stare, she explained: "It might draw them right to us."

"Let them come," Calypso responded. She spun on her heel and walked off towards the GunSniper and Redler, her movements simultaneously purposeful and aimless.

Her GunSniper looked as though it had been through the proverbial wringer. The left-side gatling gun was gone, blown off in the fight at Rocketown two nights before. The right-side weapon remained, but had long since run out of ammo. The chest-mounted gun and backpack rocket launchers were also empty, leaving the three-barreled lasers on the GunSniper's wrists as the only useable parts of the Zoid's once-formidable arsenal. The armor was scorched and pitted virtually everywhere, with most of the silver trim now tarnished the same black as the rest of the GunSniper's paint scheme.

The Zoid had sustained no serious damage to its internal or movement systems – that was a minor miracle, although Calypso would have preferred a couple major one. But the other damage was far beyond what the Zoid could fix through its self-recovery abilities. It would need several days of repair work before it would be battle-ready again. _If_ they ever got out of these God-forsaken mountains, Calypso thought. The Zoid's condition might well soon be a moot point.

She shook her head violently. Those were thoughts she didn't need to be thinking right now, that she couldn't _afford_ to think right now.

But she couldn't afford _not_ to.

She glanced over at Leah, who was now sitting on the right front foot of her Redler. Calypso noted with irrational annoyance that, for all the fighting they had been through in the preceding days, the elegant dragon-Zoid was unscathed. Since the Redler lacked any ranged weapons, there was little Leah could do in a firefight. She usually worked as an airborne scout for the team in its battles, only occasionally attacking unwary enemy Zoids with the Redler's claws and tail blade. She had actually brought down one Rev Raptor on her own and damaged another in the last battle, the day before, when the Backdraft Zoids had ambushed them while the Spirit Cats were ostensibly leading the way to their base.

That was either excellent planning on the part of the Backdraft or a trap laid by Rebecca. Calypso muttered curses into the wind and felt no doubt that Rebecca deserved every one for setting the Chimeras up. She deserved them even if she hadn't, as far as Calypso was concerned. Stevan had picked an unspeakably bad time to go start trying to find a girlfriend.

_Stevan._ She squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled heavily, fighting back the fury inside her. He was gone. She had to face that. He was possibly gone in the most sobering sense of the word, or if not, at the very least gone in the sense that he was not personally present at the time. And that was what mattered most right now. He was gone, and she had to make the decisions.

She offered one more profanity to the wind. She was not a leader and had never had any desire to be one. She had been content to let Stevan plan and give the orders on the battlefield, because he was reasonably good at it and because she had no inclination towards that sort of thing. She was an individualist at heart, and so, really, was he. Illogically, that was why they made a good team.

But the team was just her now, her and Leah – and the Zoids, she menatally added, looking at her GunSniper apologetically. And Leah was a kid. Calypso wasn't _that_ much older, but she was older nonetheless and vastly more experienced. For Leah's sake, she had to start making decisions, and making the _right_ ones.

But there was only one decision to be made that mattered, and that was the one giving her trouble: How much longer should they wait for Stevan before they gave up, leaving the mountains in search of civilization and sanctuary?

Rationally, they had already waited about as long as they could afford to. It had been…nineteen hours since the ambush, when they had last seen him and his Command Wolf before they had been separated in the firefight. If he was alive and capable of getting back to them, he should have done so by now. They could go looking for him, but Calypso knew that was courting disaster. The Backdraft hunters' absence disturbed her almost as much as Stevan's, and she couldn't risk blundering into them. There was no way her Zoid could make it through another fight.

That was what her reason told her, anyway. Her emotions told her they should find him, whatever the consequences, or to compromise by staying where they were and continuing to wait for him. (Though she hadn't said so, her hope had been that a fire would draw him to their location instead of the Backdraft.) But waiting any longer could be suicide, her reason argued back. Even if the Backdraft left them alone, the meager supplies they had stored in the Zoids were almost gone. She couldn't afford to rely on her emotions. She was the leader now. It was her decision.

Calypso turned and walked away from the Zoids and Leah. Maybe after a few more losing battles with the sticks she would be able to decide what to do.

--------

**Author's Note:** Understand that the italic paragraphs interspersed with normal-type ones are intentional here and unrelated to me previous problems with italic formatting.


	9. Wolf Pack

Stevan crouched like a cornered animal, shaking his head slowly. "No," he told the thing, the presence. "Not again."

He had no way of telling how long he had been unconscious after finding the destroyed Rev Raptor. He guessed it was several hours. When he woke he was drained, spent, no longer capable of feeling. Though robbed of its best weapon, his guilt had continued its assault.

At first he had tried to convince himself that what he had done was not really so bad, that the Zoids he had destroyed were unpiloted like the ones he had fought at the dustbowl days before. But it was no use. His remorse crushed the feeble defense. These Raptors had performed much better than the others, and unless the Backdraft's R&D department worked more quickly than any he had ever heard of, the Raptors superior performance couldn't just be attributed to better droid pilots.

There was no denying it. The Rev Raptors on the moutainside had contained living, breathing humans.

And even if they had not, he was still guilty of destroying the Zoids themselves. Leave the scientists to debate whether or not Zoids were truly alive. Seeing them dead gave Stevan a unique perspective on the issue, and there was no doubt about it in his mind.

When that failed, he had tried to make himself believe that he had not murdered the Zoids and their pilots after all. It was the Command Wolf that had gone berserk and attacked that way, he told told himself. It wasn't his fault. He was just along for the ride.

But that was a lie, too, and he knew it. He couldn't delude himself into thinking those things any more than he had been able to delude himself into thinking that he was alone after he had seen the shape on the creek bank.

He had searched for more rationalizations, more justifications, but had failed to find any. He was forced to admit to himself what he had done.

Unable to deny the act, he moved on to analyzing it, and after some time had reached the conclusion that he was being punished. Something he had done in his past had angered a higher power, who in retribution had made him go mad.

Part of him wondered if that explanation was crazy in and of itself, but he didn't haver any others, so he had stuck with it and moved on to trying to figure out what sin he had committed. He remembered many, but none so grevious and outstanding as to bring down such sudden, terrible vengeance, at least not in his mind.

It had all started when he had met Rebecca.

And that was it. Everything that had happened was because he had talked to Rebecca at that diner in Sol. The the face from his dream that had already haunted him uncounted times had welled up once more in his consciousness, and this time he thought he saw accusation in the blue-eyed gaze. Lashing out was no use. He knew that from experience.

_I won't leave you_, she had said in the dream.

_I know,_ he had answered.

_So why did you before?_

All of this replayed now at high speed as he sat crouched on the hillside, meeting the stare of the thing before him and wishing he could do the same with the presence. He knew they were aware of what he was feeling, could sense their reaction, a mixture of incomprehension, disgust, and amusement.

The mist was gone now. Not even wispy vestiges remained. The sunlight of mid-morning fell full on the hillside. It was behind the strange Zoid, outlining its shape in silhouette, leaving it dark and shadowy except for the glowing eyes that matched Stevan's stare.

The Zoid was a wolf-form, but far larger than the Command Wolf, sheathed in angular armor, which was true white in color rather than bone. Like Stevan, it was crouched down, but its posture was curious rather than defensive. It moved its head close to him and growled, softly and questioningly.

"No!" he said, with passion this time. "Go away. I'm not killing anyone else." He stood up and turned his back on the Zoid, wishing his knees would stop wobbling. "I'm not going to change my mind."

He heard a sound and looked over his shoulder to see what it was. The Zoid cocked its head to one side, and a hatch in the top of its skull swung open in invitation.

"I'll stay here and die on this mountainside first!" he screamed.

But what about Calypso and Leah?

The unwelcome thought hit him like a blow, driving him to his hands and knees. _You might not care if you live or die, but what about them?_ The presence had never spoken to him. He was displeased to realize that it was he himself, and not the Zoid or the presence, who was asking this question.

He was even more displeased to realize that he had no good answer. "What if they're dead?" he countered, unable to make himself phrase the statement in any more definite way and not caring if his argument was weaker because of it.

_What if they're not?_

He tried to evade the issue by bringing the debate back to his main point. "I'm not going to do any more killing."

_Fine._ _Don't. _His opposition was just as determined. _What about Calypso and Leah?_

"I'm not going to kill any more."

_Is that all you can say?_ One of his warring halves was vaguely exasperated with the other. _What is your problem? It was survival of the fittest. If you hadn't killed them, they would have killed you._

"Maybe they would have, maybe not."

_What do you mean, "maybe not?"_

"They might have only destroyed my Command Wolf."

_"Only"?_

Suddenly filled with an entirely new kind of self-recrimination, he cast a fleeting glance at the Zoid. It registered no reaction.

_You're wasting time._ _Are you going to go and see if your friends are still alive or stay here feeling sorry for yourself?_

He didn't answer. _Do you really want to stay here until you waste away?_ his opponent persisted.

He was so hungry he was almost sick. He guessed it had been two days or more since he had eaten. "That's a low blow."

_But it's true, just the same._

Slowly, he turned back to the Zoid and began to walk towards it. The unidentified presence and the one that seemed to be the Zoid itself welcomed him.

Weakly, he climbed on to the head. Just as he was about to lower himself through the open hatch into the cockpit, he could feel the two entitie's attitudes change. He could feel them getting ready to hunt. He recoiled and almost fell to the ground. Strangely, the act of catching himself used up all of the resistance he had left.

He eased himself down into the cockpit chair and the hatch closed above him.

--------

Calypso's posture in her rockpit chair was an interesting study in contradiction. Though overall she was slumped back from a mixture of fatigue and depression, her individual muscles were uncomfortably tensed, the result of the unpleasant thoughts and emotions still at war within her.

She had to tell herself she was doing the right thing, even if she couldn't quite make herself believe it. The decision has essentially been made for her. They simply couldn't afford to wait any longer. That no Backdraft Zoids had arrived to finish her and Leah off had about used up whatever was left in their allotment of luck, she figured. Their only option was to escape while they still had the chance and tell the ZBC what had happened. If Stevan was still alive, that would be the best way to help him.

A low groan escaped her lips as she scanned her sensor displays. At the moment, the only thing her mind would allow her to know for certain was that she was desperate for a good night's sleep. She had slept on the Spirit Cats' WhaleKing out of exhaustion, and that kind of sleep brought little true rest. Much less the few hours she had managed to snatch while she and Leah took turns keeping watch during their wait in the mountains.

She would have thought that it would have been harder to cope with the consequences of her decision early on, just after they had left the campsite. Instead, the opposite was true. Then, the emotional lift of _doing_ something, of taking action, of simply having _made _decision, had carried her through her doubts. But now, as they neared their goal, she was second-guessing herself again.

But they were getting closer, and that sealed the deal. Based on data from her nav computer and what she remembered from the trip the other way, and estimated they couldn't be more than ten or fifteen klicks from the valley where they had left the Spirit Cats WhaleKing. The terrain they had already covered was difficult, making the narrow but relatively flat-floored canyon she was now walking through a welcome change. It would take more effort to turn around and go back than it would to simply continue on. After so much fighting, Calypso was content – as content as she could be, anyway – with the path of least resistance.

_Path. _

_The other way._

Calypso's doubt was suddenly replaced by concern. Nebulous, unspecific, ill-defined concern. There was something wrong, something she was forgetting.

"Leah," she radioed, "any sign of the Backdraft?" The question was foolish and she knew it. Leah was experienced in flying recon from dozens of ZBC-sanctioned matches, and had never failed to relay any pertinent information, let alone the possible presence of enemy Zoids. But Calypso's inexplicable, nagging worry, pouring salt into the wounds of an already exhausted mind, forced her to ask anyway.

"Nothing," Leah responded. Her voice as as tired as Calypso's, strained by a weariness that had overmatched the Leah's usual energetic disposition. That energy was partly a product of her personality and partly simple youthful exuberance. Stevan had sometimes jokes about being the "old man" of the team, both because he was older and because he was – ostensibly, as he usually qualified – the team's leader. Calypso realized once again that she was now the "old woman." Or something like that. Whatever. She didn't like it, in any case.

In retrospect, that she actually noticed the tiny flash of movement on her rear view screen while lost in such brooding thoughts was an other of the minor miracles that she had so recently almost despised. Her mind cleared instantaneously as she and her Zoid became aware of the threat in the same moment. Even so, they were almost too late.

The GunSniper sprang sideways, avoiding the energy blast from one of the attacking Rev Raptor's arm guns but not the other. It scored a hit on the GunSniper's own left arm, found its way through the armor protection, and destroyed a joint actuator. The limb abruptly swung down towards the ground, its three-barrel laser cannon now useless. Incapable of feeling pain, the GunSniper nonetheless screamed out in surprise and anger.

"Never mind, Leah," Calypso called as she spun her Zoid around to face the pair of Rev Raptors that were leaping down from their hiding places in clefts in the rocky canyon walls. "They're back here."

--------

The Zoid had been sprinting across the vast expanse of foothills for a couple of minutes before Stevan realized that they were the same ones he had passed through while fleeing (what he guessed was) the day before. He was struck by how different the terrain seemed. They looked the same no matter what direction one traveled through them in, but the new wolf Zoid, with its larger size, could handle them better than the Command Wolf had. Sometimes it could simply leap from hilltop to hilltop with single huge bounds, lessing the hemmed-in feeling Stevan had experienced before.

But for the most part, the difference had nothing to do with such purely physical matters. Before, Stevan had been running for his life, concerned with nothing more than escaping his pursuers and thinking no further than the next few minutes or even seconds. This was different.

He was not running away any more.

The recklessness filled him, infused him with strength to drive away his exhuaustion, at least temporarily. His fears, fears the madness would overcome him once again, were ebbing away with his weakness. He felt some part of the madness now, to be sure. Or something like it. But what he felt now seemed as different from the madness as this passge through the foothills did from the one the day before. There was the same battle-lust, the same raw, instinctive voice within him that cried out for the glory of the chase and the hunt and the kill. But it was controlled now. Instead of pulling him along with it, it drove him forward.

The Zoid pounded onward tirelessly, its pace mocking the undulating ground. Stevan's hands rested on the control column, but he moved it only rarely, and when he somehow felt almost as if the input had been unneccessary, a mere distraction to the Zoid as it continued a task it was easily capable of accomplishing better on its own. There was no annoyance in the feeling, though, no more than a gentle but firm admonishment from the Zoid and the presence, a reassurance that the time for his help would come.

Rationally, he knew that the Backdraft could attempt to use the cover of the foothills to stage another ambush the same way they had before, but he was not concerned about that. He was sure that the Zoid and the presence would be aware of any such threat well ahead of time and make him aware of it, and that they, together, were capable of handling it anyway.

_Trust_. It was one of the few coherent thoughts Stevan had as they grew ever closer to their goal. His mind was no longer fogged by anguish and weariness – conscious thought simply seemed superfluous now; indeed, he was only dimly aware of the goal itself. But when he thought about it later, and when he considered it other times after experiencing it in the future, _trust_ was the best way he could come up with of describing and expressing it. He, the Zoid, and the presence thought as one, acted as one, _were_ one.

They were the predator. Their enemies were prey. They would hunt, they would fight, and they would be victorious.

--------

Calypso's cry of fury and desperation matched the one emitted by her GunSniper as she slammed her control sticks up again their stops and the Zoid lunged forward, bowling over a charging Rev Raptor and knocking it onto its back. It rolled, displaying an admirable coordination of its own reflexes and its pilot's skill, but not fast enough. The tri-barrel gun on the GunSniper's wrist, its only remaining weapon, sprayed fire into the fallen Zoid. It managed to get halfway on its feet, then flopped to the canyon floor again in a heap, ringed by tiny pits and divots carved into the dusty rock floor by errant bolts of energy from Calypso's wild burst.

How could she have been so _stupid_? What kind of idiocy had possessed her to follow the exact same route to the WhaleKing that they had taken before? Of course the Backdraft would have sentries posted along the way in case they did exactly that. She would not blame her weariness for the mental fumble – that was only an excuse. No, it was her responsibility, her fault. She was the leader. She had known all along that she was not cut out for that role. She had failed, and now her failure would cost her everything.

_No. No, not everything. _She spun the GunSniper on its heel, her finger only momentarily letting up on the trigger before squeezing it again to hose a stream of laser fire at another Rev Raptor that leapt deftly sideways out of the way. She turned to hold off a third enemy Zoid, noting a blur of motion in her peripheral vision where the second had been even as she did so. _If she could just help Leah get away. _

But there was no way she could tell – _order _- her teammate to escape while she could. Their comms had dissolved into jammed static again as soon as the attack had begun. _Go!_ she screamed at Leah in her mind, hoping some force she could not comprehend would carry the cry, like a prayer, to the younger warrior in time for it to do any good. Her tri-barrel gun continued to fire, catching the Rev Raptor under her crosshairs in a hail of golden darts. The Backdraft Zoid reeled in a kind of macabre, herky-jerky dance even as its partner completed its soaring leap, landing with deadly grace next to the GunSniper and lunging to strike with its reaper's blades. Calypso turned to meet the attack, knowing it would be too late. _Go!_ she implored again. _Fly!_

Leah was flying, albeit just barely. The Redler screamed down into the canyon, its backwash hurling up a rooster-tail of dust and gravel from the floor. It passed Calypso in a barely-discernible flash of purple, its claws slashing across the Rev Raptor before its blades could tear into the GunSniper's flank, carrying it a few meters, and then dumping it back to the ground. The Raptor slid a short distance farther on the strength of the momentum imparted by its brief, wild ride and then stopped, its Command System and quite likely its pilot also knocked senseless.

Any joy Leah and Calypso might have felt about this momentary triumph was short-lived. The impact of the Redler's attack on the Rev Raptor and the Backdraft Zoid's weight during the split-second the Redler had carried it had, however slightly, thrown off the airborne Dragon Zoid's aerial balance. And at the altitude it was flying, perhaps ten meters at most above the canyon floor, there was no room for even such slight errors.

There was a chance, a good chance, that Leah would have been able to correct the momentary loss of control and save a crash, if she had been given the time and space to do so. But she had neither. The Redler smashed into the other Rev Raptor, which had somehow maintained its footing after Calypso's bombardment. The two Zoids became one tangled mass that hurtled across the canyon wall. Calypso watched helplessly as the unwillingly united adversaries had their progress abruptly halted by the sudden intervention of the canyon wall, then separated into their own two identities distinct to the human eye and came to rest.

The Rev Raptor had absorbed the main force of the impact and would not rise again without weeks of work in a repair bay. The Redler was better off – it began to thrash and struggle to get back on its feet and into the safety of the sky almost immediately – but it was still too badly damaged to accomplish the second objective and possibly the first as well.

Suddenly, Calypso had other concerns. Watching disaster almost befall her friend and teammate, she had forgotten to look out for her own well-being. A punishing salvo hit the GunSniper from behind. It lurched, made an abortive effort to stay upright, and then fell awkwardly forward, sprawled across the bottom of the cavern. Calypso wrenched the controls, demanding, pleading, that her Zoid respond and save them both. Ahead of her, the Redler tried again to rise and again failed. In her rear-view monitor, a quartet of Rev Raptors strode closer with casual purposefulness.

Then a white blur, gleaming in a ray of sunlight that had found its way into the shadow of the crevice, descended upon the Raptors like the wrath of an offended deity.

--------

Stevan's heart momentarily rose into his throat as the Zoid leaped off of the cliff and plummted down into the canyon, but the terror lasted no longer than that moment. Arcing into a diving posture, the Zoid was unconcerned with the difficulty of making a safe landing on the canyon floor a hundred meters below. It had no plans to attempt that.

The leading Rev Raptor, proverbially, never knew what hit it. The forepaws of Stevan's mount, with all the weight of Stevan's Zoid multiplied by the speed of the fall from the cliff, struck the Raptor like a pile-driver. The Backdraft Zoid had barely hit the ground before its attacker somersaulted off of it, landing perfectly on all fours in a ready crouch.

For a full second, the remaining trio of Rev Raptors stood still, shocked by the sudden, unexpected attack. That was at least a half-second too long. The Wolf Zoid sprang at them, seizing one's neck in its jaws, which now glowed and crackled with blue white energy. It bounded on, unceremoniously dropping its throttled prey after a couple of strides as its opponents, now reduced to two in number, finally came out of their shocked stupor.

They spun and opened fire with their arm-mounted guns, but were unable to score with a single shot. Stevan's Zoid made a circling turn, one enemy blast cutting into the canyon wall it had pushed off of in mid-air an instant before, a second passing beneath it an nansecond after it touched the ground and leaped again. It grabbed the third Rev Raptor in its mouth as it had the second, and the fourth's wild fire hit its helpless partner rather than the intended target.

The wolfish Zoid held the knocked-out Rev Raptor for a couple of seconds, almost tauntingly, then threw it down with a shake of its head. The last Backdraft Zoid started to slowly back slowly back away. Just as it turned to begin a full retreat, its adversary struck. Within a moment it joined its battered, defeated mates on the scarred, pock-marked bottom of the gorge.

The battle, in its entirety, had lasted less than half a minute. The three-in-one harmony that had sustained him suddenly slipping away, Stevan surveyed the scene with blurring vision. He swayed in his cockpit seat, only the harness preventing him from collapsing outright to one side or the other. The Zoid, having apparently finished its own survey of the battlefield, walked slowly forward.

Calypso unfastened her harness and yanked a handle on the side of her command couch headrest. The GunSniper's orange-tinted cockpit canopy swung open, and she jumped out onto the dusty canyon floor.

The white fury was no longer a blur; it has resolved itself into a discernible, detailed shape, a lean, angular, lupine Zoid. Calypso ran towards it, Leah not far behind.

The two slowed as the newcomer walked calmly closer to them. They and the unknown Zoid stopped and then regarded each other. Calypso and Leah fought the urge to take a step back as they felt the Zoid's imposing presence. After a few seconds, it lowered its head down to their level. At first they fought it was merely looking at them more closely. Then the hatch between its ears opened and it cocked its head expectantly.

Together, Calypso and Leah climbed up and peered into the Zoid's cockpit, and gasped as they saw Stevan's muddy, unconscious form in the command seat.


	10. Exeunt

The storm rolled in from over the ocean and hurled waves of driving rain on the coastline, as though the sea was expressing its frustration at not being able to overcome and swallow up the land. The blackness of the towering cliffs was stark against the iron-gray sky. Below, on the beach, chunks of rock left over from the cliffs' centuries of retreat in the face of the ocean's assault competed for space with sand turned to muddy slop by the downpour. The feet of the three Saber Tigers sank into it half a meter with each step as they walked slowly towards the wind-swept waves. The soaked sand clung to the Tigers' paws, caking their gleaming silver claws with brownish pulp.

In most settings, the huge Zoids would have dominated the scene. Not so here. The looming cliffs dwarfed them, but even the rock face was hopelessly outclassed by the enormous, hulking monstrosity that the Saber Tigers were moving towards.

There was a certain comic aspect to the giant vehicle. The almost cautious slowness with which it was easing itself out of the water and onto the beach seemed incongruous to its mammoth size. What was more, it was clearly formed along the lines of a crustacean, not exactly the most commanding template for the design of a military transport.

But if the design was not entirely menacing, it was eminently practical. Though it was not, properly speaking, a Zoid itself, the Dragoon Nest took a cue from the Zoids it carried and acknowledged the superiority of animal engineering over human design. The Nest had a segmented, bendable body and flexible legs, allowing it to swim through the water rather than push its way through it in the way a less elegant vehicle such as a WhaleKing had to. The Nest did have a set of thrusters on the end of its tail, but these merely augmented and assisted the movement capabilities inherent in the Nest's design. And once the mind absorbed the concept of what amounted to a metal lobster the size of a city block, the Nest did have an undeniably impressive air about it.

The transport's legs could also be used to move over land, and were currently engaged in pulling the Nest onto the rain-swept seashore. They carved deep pits into the muck and rock, a broad swath of which was being crushed into a smooth pathway under the weight of the Nest's belly. Finally the transport came to a stop. There was a booming hiss of escaping air loud enough to carry over the din of the waves, wind, and rain as a watertight seal was broken. Then, a huge hatch in the Nest's prow, beneath its relatively tiny head command center, swung open and folded down onto the beach, becoming a ramp to the cavernous hangar bay within the transport's main body.

Rebecca slumped in her Saber Tiger's command chair, then arced her back in an effort to stretch her cramped muscles in the tight confines of the Zoid's cockpit. She shook her head and blinked in an effort to clear the weariness from her eyes. At last the long, difficult passage through the mountains was over.

But she knew that the safety of the Dragoon Nest was only a temporary respite. The path ahead she had chosen for herself was not an easy one. While the storm spent its fury above the waves, the Nest's journey back from whence it had come would be merely the calm before a much more terrible one.

Rebecca throttled up her Saber Tiger and it paced forward between the Nest's massive pincers, trailed and flanked on either side by her two escorts. The A.I. "pilots" in the two Saber Tigers had performed well, better than expected. Even with the advantage of their being under the direction of a actual human commander factored out of the equation, Rebecca estimated the droids were at least half a generation ahead of the Backdraft designs they had been based on in capability.

There was a beep as her Zoid received a comm transmission, and the face of the Nest's commander appeared on-screen in a new window. "It is good to see you, m'Lady," he said. "We were beginning to grow concerned."

Rebecca smiled. "It just took a bit longer to get through the mountains than I thought," she answered.

The three Saber Tigers entered the hangar bay and came to a stop. Rebecca unfastened her safety harness and pulled the cockpit hatch opener handle as the Tiger lowered its head to allow her to exit. She climbed out of the cockpit and jumped the last couple of meters to the hangar floor, feeling the cold of the ocean outside ratiating from the metal.

The floor of the hangar shifted beneath her feet as the Nest's legs began to push it back off the beach into the water. There was a throaty hum of machinery as the bay's door/ramp lifted off the ground, followed by another hissing boom that echoed through the hangar as the door reached its closed position and sealed shut, cutting off the muted light of the outside world and leaving the floodlights in the ceiling as the bay's only illumination.

A squad of technicians swarmed into the hangar to examine the three Saber Tigers, pausing to bow perfunctorily to Rebecca as she passed. A smaller, more-ornately attired group moved towards her, but she waved them away. She stopped only long enough to take a hand-held comm unit from one, then walked towards the exit. The metal half-doors slid apart as she approached and she continued through into a long corridor.

The muted ring of her boots on the floor was the only sound, leaving her free to continue the musings she had begun on the journey through the mountains. Why had she done what she had done? Why had she made such an effort to help the Chimeras when Count Steinhoff's thugs had targeted them? It had probably been a waste of her time. She did not hold out much hope for their chances of survival after the ambush in the mountains.

She had reached something close to a an answer to these questions. Ultimately, her decision to help the three hapless warriors had been made more for her sake than for their's. It was resistance, her first true _act_ of resistance instead of mere words. It helped her get used to the idea.

She would probably have to grow accustomed to it fast. Steinhoff's pathetic Backdraft group was a mere sideshow compared to what she would soon have to face up against.

The Count himself was an enigma. Rebecca knew that he had ambitions and ideas of his own that were probably not in agreement with those of the Council. And not necessarily entirely in opposition to her own, either. _The question is how far he plans to take them._

She raised the comm unit to her lips, fingering a lock of silver hair that fell over her shoulder and noting regretfully that she would have to disguise it again soon. But perhaps not for much longer. She keyed the comm's mic and spoke into it. "Captain."

"Yes, m'Lady?" the Nest's commander responded.

"Take me home." _For however much longer it _is _home_, she added to herself.

The command was not necessary – the Nest's Captain already knew what their destination was. Neverthless, he would not say so, would not question her, just as he and the others had never questioned any of the things she had done or said in the past. It was not their place. The Captain answered immediately.

"As you wish, Your Highness."

--------

Slowly, ponderously, the WhaleKing rose from the valley. Once above the height of the surrounding peaks, it stopped its near-vertical ascent and switched to forward thrust, rolling slightly to turn on to a course away from the moutain range and the storm sweeping across it. The rain beat impotently at the WhaleKing's metal hull, seemingly as dismayed to find the giant aircraft escaping its fury as the ocean the storm had so recently sprung from was at its inability to conquer the offending dry land.

Calypso walked in to the WhaleKing's command center and sat down in one of the control station chairs. She randomly keyed buttons on the console screen in front of her, switching through a series of displays and readouts, at least half of which made no sense to her at all. Giving up on the console, she turned her attention to her teammate, who was already seated next to her in the pilot's station. Leah's brow was furrowed, and Calypso thought she saw a hint of white knuckles on the younger warrior's hands as she gripped the control yoke, but she seemed to be doing alright so far.

"How's Stevan?" Leah asked, her eyes never leaving the readouts in front of her.

"Sleeping like a baby," Calypso answered. "I think he'll be fine once he's had some rest."

"Good."

The WhaleKing was far larger than any Zoid or other aircraft Leah had piloted before, but in a way that was to her advantage: the huge transport was simply so unwieldy and unresponsive that it was hard to make a mistake disasterous enough to have a discernible effect. "Hey, this isn't too bad," Leah commented, her face lit up by a small smile. "It's easier than the Redler, in some ways."

"Yeah, and you've got several thousand times as much mass wrapped around you for protection if you screw up," Calypso said. She had heard what the exact weight of a WhaleKing was at some point, but couldn't remember. The effort of trying to recall the figure triggered a deeply fatigued yawn that she couldn't entirely stifle. "Once you're sure you've got the hang of it well enough to keep us on an even keel, see what you can figure out about the navigation systems." Leah nodded, absorbed in her own data screens.

Calypso slumped forward across her console, rested her head on her folded arms and stared at the holographic projection of the WhaleKing and the surrounding terrain projected in the center of the room. The jagged peaks were outlined in glowing blue-green; a rather sinister effect, Calypso thought.

They had spent ten more minutes in the canyon after Stevan and the strange white Zoid had brutally defeated the Backdraft Rev Raptors. It had taken Calypso that long to get her GunSniper to respond, and she had hated every minute of it. The removal of immediate threat had not much lessened her desire to get away from the place as quickly as possible. Their pursuers numbers had thus far seemed unlimited, so she was by no means convinced that the group of Rev Raptors they had just fought were the last the enemy had to offer; and she wanted to get help for Stevan as soon as possible.

But her fear was not really based on doubt that the strange Zoid could handle any new attackers, even with its pilot unconscious; indeed, it was more rooted in her certainty that it could.

"Calypso."

She was shaken out of her reverie by Leah's voice. She stopped staring into space through the holo-projection and shifted her head on her arms to look at her teammate. "What?"

Leah turned away from her screens and looked Calypso in the eye. "That Zoid. There's something about it…that scares me. A little."

Calypso stared into Leah's gray gaze for a long moment. "Yeah," she agreed. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"Where do you think it came from?" Leah asked.

"I don't know," Calypso answered after another long pause. "I wouldn't worry about it right now, though."

As difficult as the few minutes spent in the canyon after the end of the battle had been, the rest of the journey to the waiting WhaleKing had been worse. The pathetic pace of the damaged GunSniper and Redler (the latter reduced to shuffling along on the ground instead of flying), patiently paced all the while by the wolf Zoid, had made those last few kilometers take far longer than they should have, and every minute seemed like ten.

But now that they had reached their goal and were on their way, all of Calypso's fears and worries seemed to be melting away. Part of the reason was simply that exhaustion had rendered her mind incapable of processing such emotions. But there was more to it than that.

Under the muted thrumming of the WhaleKing's engines and the occasional beep from its command center's controls and data readouts, Calypso could hear the faint sount of the wind and rain outside. To her it seemed like the last, useless parting shot of the mountains as they were left behind, defeated like the Chimeras' persecutors that had nearly run them to ground within the range.

_We won_, Calypso thought. She had not failed; her mistakes had not cost everything after all. Her heavy eyelids fell closed, blocking out the glare of the multitude of screens and displays that surrounded her. _We won._

_--------_

The floor seemed to sway beneath Stevan as he slowly walked into the hangar bay, as though he was on an ocean-going vessel rolling on the storm-riled waves instead of an airship.

He reached out with his right hand but found nothing he could grab to steady himself, only empty air. The metal floor rushed up to meet him. He managed to save himself from falling, albeit by landing hard on his right knee with a thud.

Hissing from a sharp intake of breath at the pain, he levered himself back on to his feet and kept walking, focusing careful attention on each step. There was a question rumble that reverberated briefly throughout the bay. _It knows I'm here_, he thought. _No surprise._

A few meters away stood the white wolf Zoid. Beside it were the Gustav and cargo truck, and beyond them the GunSniper and Redler. The white Zoid and the two transports looked starkly pristine next to their pair of savagely battered hangar-mates. The wolf-form turned to look at him as he got back on his feet and walked closer to it.

"Hi," he said quietly. He felt the two entities, the Zoid and whatever the presence was, draw up around him, seep into his consciousness at its edges. After experiencing variations of the feeling twice already, he was almost used to it, or at the very least enough so that it did not seem frightening or alien to him. This was what, he was convinced, had awakened him from his exhausted sleep, brought him almost inevitably to the hangar bay before attending to any more immediate concern such as getting food for his painfully empty stomach, and pushed aside his brooding a few moments before.

He thought about the first time he had experienced the indescribable triune merging with the Zoid and whatever the other thing was, how its results had been so horrible he had vowed to himself he would never allow it to happen again. And then, when it had happened again, how different it had seemed, how laughably foolish his promise and his terrible fears had suddenly seemed.

He did not become the monster every time this bonding occurred. That much he had already had proven to him.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that he would _not_ ever be overcome at some time in the future, either.

He and the Zoid stared at each other. He blinked, and thought with amusement that it was not fair he should have to do so first simply because the Zoid lacked the physiology or need to do so. "Not a fair contest," he told the Zoid as he stood under its firey orange gaze.

There was a long time where the hangar silent except for the distant voice of the storm outside. Finally, Stevan spoke again. "I think I know what you are," he said, addressing himself to the previously unidentifiable presence.

He was not sure when he had reached the conclusion. It had been foremost in his mind when he had woken up a little while before, but he found it hard to believe his mind had been able to undertake any such contemplation during his deep, hopelessly tired slumber. Now that he knew, though (or at least thought he knew), it did not seem strange to him. It should have, but it did not. It seemed natural, as though he had always known it.

"You can come out," he told the presence. Then, after he received no discernible answer, he added lamely, "It's alright."

There was still no response. A minute passed, then two, as silence competed once more with the storm's persistent whisper for supremacy. Stevan sighed and looked deeper into the hangar bay, wincing in sympathy as he saw just how badly damaged his teammates' Zoids were.

The Chimeras' base was gone, and their repair facilities were gone with it. Contracting out the work would be expensive. Stevan glanced around the hangar bay. They would have to put the WhaleKing's repair equipment to good use while they had the chance. He had no idea if they would be able to keep the WhaleKing, but he resolved to do everything in his power to make sure they did. It was closest thing they had to a home base now, and they would go broke from lodging, storage, and repair expenses without one. Of course, they might well go broke trying to maintain the massive vehicle, too.

But all of that could be avoided if they could bring in enough money, if they could win enough battles. _To survive, you win._ The truth of that principle had been hammered into him by the recent ordeal.

"OK," Stevan said at last, turning back to the wolf-form. "That's fine."

He stared into the orange eyes, and when he spoke again it was to both the presence and the Zoid. "Look, I need your help," he said. "The important thing is that we understand each other."

"We can work together."

"Right?"

The Zoid breathed another quiet growl, and though he could hear nothing else, Stevan felt that the third partner in the pact had also responded to his proposal. Unholy as it might prove to be, he decided, the alliance had been agreed to.

"Alright," he said, nodding with a sense of finality.

He started to leave, and had made it about halfway across the bay before he looked back. The Zoid stood motionless, its white armor shining faintly in the illumination of the hangar floodlights, its head turned slightly to watch him leave, now meeting his gaze.

He nodded once more, by way of goodbye, then turned his back again. The echo of his footsteps, steadier than they had been before, mixed with the sound of the continuing storm as he walked toward the exit.

--------

_Soli Deo Gloria._


End file.
